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ROADTOWN
ROADTOWN
BY
EDGAR CHAMBLESS
NEW YORK
ROADTOWN PRESS
150 NASSAU STREET
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1910
BY
EDGAR CHAMBLESS
\no
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to J. Pierpont Morgan, a
straight player of a crooked game, who, it is said,
played his usual role in the Wall Street manipulations
of the Central Railroad of Georgia securities, which
adroitly and legally absorbed the small savings and
happiness of many unsophisticated investors — an
action which, in my case at least, proved to be a bless-
ing in disguise, for it made me suffer first and then
made me think. Hence the gratitude and consequent
dedication to Mr. Morgan for starting the train of
thought, which finally resulted in the invention of
Roadtown, a plan for side-stepping the crooked game
as now played so that henceforth whosoever will may
become a straight player of a straight game.
FOREWORD
Nineveh, Babylon, Rome, London, New
York, — all cities from the twilight of the
past to the high noon of the present have been
constructed on one plan, which is no plan at
all. Like Topsy, they jest growed, with no
further aims in view than to huddle together
for the sake of companionship and self-protec-
tion against enemies. A map of the haphaz-
ard streets straying crookedly through them
looked like cracks in an earthenware dish.
The siege-walls which until recently sur-
rounded them emphasized the prisoner-like ex-
istence of their inhabitants. Noise, dirt, dis-
ease, suffocation and confusion, crime — these
spirits of evil took up their abode in the midst
of them, never to be dislodged, and students of
political economy, hygiene, decency and mo-
rality wasted eloquence and logic in showing
how bad it all was, and in suggesting pica-
yune and transient remedies. The true
1
2 FOREWORD
Moses, with the effectual remedy, which will
lead us out of our long Egyptian bondage,
arrives only to-day, and if we will but follow
the teachings of the gospel contained in the
ensuing pages, we may be free, healthy,
wealthy and happy forevermore.
This Moses of ours, contemporarily incar-
nated as Mr. Chambless, arrives at the psycho-
logical moment when we are all ready for
him. The Jeremiahs of rotten conditions and
the Cassandras of impending woe had pre-
pared us for the necessity of change, and the
Edisons, Teslas and Lodges of electrical and
other inventions had supplied the means for it.
The great riddle was ripe for the guessing:
and Mr. Chambless has guessed it.
Transportation, distribution, and the mid-
dle-man,— what a waste of time, energy, econ-
omy and common sense are involved in our
present handling of these elements? The do-
mestic servant problem, — how sorry and slip-
shod a solution of it are the hotel and board-
ing house of to-day? The elimination of the
open country from our children's training and
from our own opportunities for peace and san-
FOREWORD 3
ity, — what a paltry and impotent substitute
for it is the hybrid suburb? Personal inde-
pendence, social harmony, full value for work
done, adequate leisure after toil, — does not
this sound like the Millennium? Read Mr.
Chambless, O ye captives of Civilization, and
burst your shackles !
He takes a map and a ruler and draws you
a straight line from the Atlantic coast to the
Alleghanies, thence on to the Mississippi, so
across the prairies to the Rockies, and down
to the very sands of the Pacific. What does
this line stand for? It stands for the site of
the New City; and there may be as many
more of them as you can make straight lines
from any given point to any other, in any di-
rection along and athwart the continent. A
single line of houses, superimposed upon
three lines of railway, one on top of the other,
underground, two stories of living and work-
ing rooms above-ground, a continuous prom-
enade along the roofs, and gardens and coun-
try front and back all the way. Concrete
"poured" houses (Edison's patent) ; smoke-
less, noiseless, unintermittent, arrow-swift
4. FOREWORD
trains, local and express, bearing you at all
times, in no time, to your precise destination
and back; telephones, telegraphs, teleposts,
parcel-carriers, freight service, compact, punc-
tual, prompt, accurate, enabling you to live
along the line from part to part and from end
to end, and be served with the best at the
cheapest at all times, while sitting in your easy
chair; house-work done mechanically, and
your private trade or profession followed in
your own workrooms at minimum expense of
time and effort and at greatest profit; rent
reduced, taxes minimized, slums exter-
minated, pure food, fresh air and exercise ad
libitum; politics purified, cut-throat competi-
tion supplanted by rational cooperation, — in
short, the means for erecting mankind to its
full stature and rendering everybody free,
useful, happy and wise can be secured by Mr.
Chambless's Roadtown, and the moment to be-
gin is Now ! Read his book and get together.
Have we not waited long enough? He has
spent half a lifetime perfecting his plans ; they
are as practical as they are attractive, and his
FOREWORD 5
only opponents are shiftless habits, stupid in-
ertia, and blind prejudice.
But before the first Roadtown has been built
out ten miles into the wilderness, it will have
become an object-lesson before which all foes
will gladly transform themselves into friends,
and all critics become eulogists. Aviation has
a mighty future: but the grand step forward
in Twentieth Century civilization is Road-
town, for not only is it an incomparable benefit
in itself, but it affords all other useful inven-
tions their best medium toward perfection.
Julian Hawthoene.
THE MAN CHAMBLESS
BY JOHN HAYNES HOLMES
It was about two years ago that a tall,
gaunt, pale young man entered my church
study and said, in quite confident terms — "I
want a long talk with you, sir, for I've got
something that I believe will interest you."
Being not wholly unused to the ways of
agents, promoters, inventors and various kinds
of visionaries, I felt somewhat impatient at
this unhesitating demand for a liberal share of
my time; but I told my visitor, as pleasantly
as possible, to be seated and to describe the
thing which he thought would "interest" me.
This was the beginning of my acquaintance
with Mr. Edgar Chambless, the author of this
book, and the opening words of my introduc
tion to Roadtown.
At that time, Roadtown was nothing but a
dream, — a crude and imperfect idea, as com-
7
8 FOREWORD
pared with the careful and well-tested con-
ception which is here given to the public. To
its inventor it appeared even then, in its orig-
inal form, to contain the solution of most
every perplexing problem of modern social
life, — to me, to whom it came not as a slowly
dawning idea but as an immediate revelation,
it appeared to be only one more extravagant
and utterly impracticable vision, akin to that
invention, once laid before me by a dear old
man, whereby light and heat might be end-
lessly generated without the combustion of
any fuel, or to that other wonderful idea, com-
mended to me by a devoted enthusiast, where-
by the drama was to be made the oasis of
all ethical instruction and the theater the
school of morals.
Something in Mr. Chambless' personality,
however, held my attention and won my sym-
pathy. In our first talk together, I was
made to believe in him even while I could not
find it within reason to believe in the revolu-
tionary possibilities of his conception, and so
I asked him to call again. And from that
time to this, I have met him and talked with
FOREWORD 9
him frequently. I have seen his dream be-
come transformed from an ill-conceived vision
into a well-conceived and thoroughly practical
idea. I have seen the man himself rise from
the position of a visionary dreamer, seeking
the ears of any who would listen, to that of a
recognized genius, welcomed in the offices of
editors and publishers, and received on equal
terms by the best known architects and in-
ventors of the nation. I have seen Roadtown
subjected by competent men to the most rigid
mechanical and economic criticisms, and be-
held it emerge triumphant. I have seen Mr.
Chambless convert architects, mechanics, char-
ity workers, philanthropists, and cost-of-liv-
ing experts from scoffing impatience to en-
thusiastic faith. I have had the privilege, in
a word, of watching the triumphant progress
of a great and original idea, and the heroic
personal victory of a true inventive genius.
During all of this time I have done nothing
but "lend my ears" to Mr. Chambless. Un-
able to help him to work out his ideas in any
practical way, I have tried to serve him as a
friend and confidant. To me he has unfolded
10 FOREWORD
his joys and his sorrows — revealed his feelings
of alternating despair and hope — told the
tales now of success and now of failure. For
two years past, I have watched and listened,
and all the while my faith in Mr. Chambless
has grown ever stronger and my sympathy
with his endeavor ever deeper. Indeed, for
some months it has been my feeling that I had
no higher duty than that of helping as best
I could, by the word of good-will, the hand-
clasp of friendship, and the listening ear of
personal faith, one of the few men I have ever
met in my experience who was truly laying
down his life for the sake of a great and un-
selfish idea.
Mr. Hawthorne, in his Foreword, has tes-
tified to his belief in the idea of Roadtown;
I would here testify, in my Foreword, to my
belief in Mr. Chambless. He is made of the
stuff of heroes — those who have sacrificed
home, friends, social positions, money, per-
sonal comfort, yea life itself, in the service of
humanity. His is the spirit of perfect devo-
tion to an ideal. He represents in his person
the type of valiant martyrdom, which I have
FOREWORD 11
read about a thousand times in books, but have
met not more than a half-dozen times in real
life. As to whether his scheme is practicable
or not, I cannot say. Experts, not accus-
tomed to being swept off their feet by bursts
of enthusiasm over chimerical ideas, have tes-
tified that it is. As to whether his concep-
tion will solve all the problems of social life
which he says it will solve, I again cannot say.
Experience teaches that every original idea
has revolutionary possibilities.
But as to Mr. Chambless himself, I can say,
and say with enthusiasm, that he is a man de-
serving of the confidence of men. Mr. Haw-
thorne commends Roadtown to the earnest
consideration of all thoughtful persons for it-
self. I commend Roadtown in a similar way
for its inventor. Prove him wrong if you
can, but first master his ideas.
Church of the Messiah, June 15th, 1910.
Park Ave. and 34th St.,
New York City.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I PAGE
When I Began to Think 17
How I came to invent Roadtown 18
CHAPTER II
A New Conception of Transportation 21
Transportation in nature 23
Our disjointed civilization 27
CHAPTER III
Line Distribution — The Logical Outcome 31
Transportation determines the form of cities .... 33
Building in one dimension 35
A line of city through the country 38
CHAPTER IV
The Roadtown Plan of Construction 40
To be built of cement 41
The railroad will be noiseless 43
Speed possibilities 46
The street upon the roof 53
CHAPTER V
Civilization Through Pipes and Wires 59
Water 63
Sewerage 64
Heating 65
13
CONTENTS
PAGE
Refrigeration 65
Drinking water 66
Bath and toilet 67
Gas 68
Vacuum 68
Disinfecting gas 69
Electric light 69
Electric power 69
Telephones 70
Dictograph 71
Telegraphone 1-2
CHAPTER VI
Roadtown Housekeeping 74
Woman's work not specialized 74
No laundry work at home 76
Dusting and sweeping 78
Making beds by machinery 79
Cooperative cooking practical 81
The end of household drudgery 84
CHAPTER VII
The Servant Problem in Roadtown 89
CHAPTER VIII
Roadtown Agriculture 90
Sufficient land to support population 93
Elimination of the middle man 99
Cooperative ownership of farm tools 100
CHAPTER IX
Industry Returns to the Home 102
Wage slavery doomed 103
A work room in every home 105
14
CONTENTS
PAGE
A new type of factory 110
A special message to women 112
The end of monotonous labor 114
CHAPTER X
Roadtown Makes Co-operation Practical .... 116
Also a Mecca for the individualist 117
The Roadtown department store 119
CHAPTER XI
Roadtown Education and Social Life 123
Roadtown athletics 125
Education for old as well as young 126
Eyes to be used less and ears more 128
Mothers for public school teachers 131
Lowest death rate in history 133
A home in the truest sense 137
CHAPTER XII
Who Will Build the Roadtowns 139
Home rule for Roadtowners 142
Detached villas practical but undesirable .... 145
Builders of Roadtown take minimum risk .... 148
The cost of the first mile of Roadtown 150
Economy increases with length 157
A real remedy for congestion 161
CHAPTER XIII
In Roadtown There Will be no Trusts 163
Shall we miss them 165
The Roadtown religion 168
15
ROADTOWN
CHAPTER I
WHEN I BEGAN TO THINK
IN the panic of 1893 I was in the city of
Los Angeles. I had received word from
the East that my small fortune had vanished
as a result of an ingenious Wall Street
railroad "reorganization." I had drawn my
last dollar from the bank and had spent it.
I was out of a job. I didn't know where
or how to get one, for I had been troubled with
eye strain all my life, and had little experience
in the work of the world. The city was
thronging with experienced and trained work-
men, out of work like myself. I did not know
where the price of my next week's board was
coming from — in short, I was stranded in a
stagnant world. It was Sunday afternoon.
17
18 ROADTOWN
I was sitting on a rock on top of a hill in the
heart of the city. The ground about me was
vacant, yet I could have thrown a stone over
the precipice into the principal street of the
city. I began to think — I needed money —
there was no opportunity to get a living by
working with my hands. I grasped eagerly
at any idea that had within it the possibility
of creating value, wealth, money, bread,
perhaps butter and a new suit of clothes. The
ground where I was sitting was vacant and
comparatively worthless. I asked why? The
answer was, lack of transportation. There
was no convenient way for people to get on
top of the hill.
Time passed. I finally located in New
York City and became a patent investigator.
I continued to think of transportation and its
relation to land value.
How I Came to Invent Roadtown.
In my business as a dealer in patents I be-
came acquainted with all manner of inventions
and inventors. I found that most inventions
were worthless, that a very few were practical
ROADTOWN 19
and were promoted and utilized in the usual
fashion. Another group I found to be prac-
tical and workable in themselves, but not
available for use because their adoption would
throw into the junk heap millions of dollars
worth of old machines, and hence they were
bought up and "shelved" by the vested inter-
ests. And still another group could not be
utilized because they would require new fran-
chises which men with little capital could not
purchase of the political franchise jobbers.
To these were added a last lot of inventions
that could not be utilized to anything like their
full capacity because they could not be fitted
into the crude mechanism of the present style
of city construction.
So I began to dream of new conditions in
which some of these shelved inventions might
be utilized to ease the burden of life for man-
kind. One plan after another was abandoned
until the idea occurred to me to lay the modern
skyscraper on its side and run the elevators
and the pipes and the wires horizontally in-
stead of vertically. Such a house would not
be limited by the stresses and strains of steel;
20 ROADTOWN
it could be built not only a hundred stories,
but a thousand stories or a thousand miles — in
short, I had found a workable way of coupling
housing and transportation into one mechan-
ism, and a human way for land-moving man to
live — I would not cure the evils of congestion
by perfecting congestion as is the case with the
skyscraper — I would build my city out into the
country. I would take the apartment house
and all its conveniences and comforts out
among the farms by the aid of wires, pipes
and of rapid and noiseless transportation. I
would extend the blotch of human habitations
called cities out in radiating lines. I would
surround the city worker with the trees and
grass and woods and meadows and the farmer
with all the advantages of city life — I had
invented Roadtown.
CHAPTER II
A NEW CONCEPTION OF TRANSPORTATION
WHEN I use the word transportation
in relation to Roadtown I do not
mean what the term usually implies. You
often hear the expression, "our transportation
systems," but your conception of its meaning
is limited to railroads, boats and street cars.
The other crude links in our transportation
system are invariably called by other names
such as trucks, carts, delivery wagons, dumb-
waiters, elevators, etc. It is true that these
last named links are sometimes referred to as
transportation devices, but not as a part of a
comprehensive system of transportation.
Roadtown transportation includes all the
links in the system of transportation auto-
matically coupled into one system. This is
what I mean by a new conception of transpor-
tation.
21
22 ROADTOWN
The functions of housing and transporta-
tion are fully coordinated by Nature in the
individual animal — legs are her vehicle of
passenger transportation, talons and arms are
her freight system, the animal body is the
house. Housing and transportation exist to-
gether, being mutually interdependent. They
are inseparable, the building is worthless with-
out transportation and conversely there would
be no need for transportation without the
house.
There is no better illustration of the need
for a proper combination of transportation
and housing than that of the human body.
The baby's first task is to learn to use its trans-
portation devices, otherwise its house or body
is useless. Life is full of lessons of the neces-
sity of the harmonious combination of the
functions of transportation and consumption.
The monkey was provided with means for
transporting himself up the banana tree and
an efficient means of getting the banana from
the stalk to his mouth. Gold carried from
mines in Peru to a jewelry shop in Madrid;
ROADTOWN 23
men carried from their homes in Brooklyn to
their offices in Wall Street; food carried from
a farm in Canada to a dining-room in a Boston
hotel; gas carried from retorts to the burner
in a parlor chandelier; electricity carried from
the generator in Niagara to the motors in
Rochester; a pound of steak carried by the
delivery boy to the basement of your house and
pulled up in a dumb-waiter; a letter carried
by a postman; the song of a Prima Donna
sent scintillating through the air by a wireless
phone — all these things and a million others
are but a civilized man's arms and legs — his
means of transportation.
Transportation in Nature.
The game of life in wild nature is but the
getting of food and water to the consuming
plant or animal, or getting the more adaptable
animal to the food or water or some warm spot,
or the society of his fellows. So the life of
man, whether it be the family with the single
house or the city with its many houses, shows
a similar relation — things needed by the in-
24 ROADTOWN
habitants, things taken from the place where
they are and to a place where we want them —
that is transportation.
Start out in the morning, number your
every minute's occupation, watch what your
neighbors are doing. The man on the stairs,
the wagon on the street, the rumbling subway
train in a three million dollar a mile right of
way, the elevator in the skyscraper, the office
boy at beck and call — it is all transportation.
Run over in your mind the work of the office
and brain workers in a city business section,
how many of them are engaging in planning,
directing and accounting the various forms of
transportation.
In fact, every hour of existence we are per-
forming some act of transportation except
when asleep. If we allow eight hours for rest
we find that two-thirds of our lives are spent
in transporting ourselves to our wants or our
wants to ourselves.
The basic principle of Roadtown is a plan
to give the social body proper arms and legs,
to make them not as they are, separate and un-
coordinated functions, but as part, in fact the
ROADTOWN 25
most important part, of the scheme of civiliza-
tion.
The members of society are all engaged in
transporting themselves and their belongings
a goodly portion of their time, and besides a
large group is exclusively engaged in the work
of transportation. Moreover, the so-called
productive labors are at every step interwoven
with operations of transportation. Analyze
for a moment the work of the factory, of the
farm — how much of it is production, how much
is transportation ? Could we, like Aladdin, rub
a mystic lamp and cause things to be created
from nothing, we would indeed be well served.
But could we command the genie of trans-
portation, the will to wish what is from where
it is to the place where we want it, our power
would be equally miraculous and quite as use-
ful.
Our methods of production, though still
extremely wasteful, are constantly growing in
efficiency. In this age a minority of mankind
produce for the entire population. A con-
stant stream of people from the farm pours
into the city. These people produce nothing
26 ROADTOWN
and expect to live by distributing goods to each
other; but congestion of population in large
cities introduces insolvable mechanical diffi-
culties in distribution, until railroads, ware
houses, trucks, wholesale and retail stores,
delivery wagons, grocery boys and dumb-
waiters, become congested; the machine clogs
and thus the growing efficiency of modern pro-
duction is lost through a more rapidly growing
waste in distribution.
The increasing number of those who get
their living by taking a slice of profit and the
growing expense due to the ever increasing
mechanical difficulties in distribution are evils
that aggravate each other.
As the makers of law live principally by the
profits of distribution, they will not change the
scheme, nor can the wealthy, with their country
villas legislate the modern city tenant back to
the loneliness, long hours and lack of con-
veniences of farm life. A proposition that
would combine cheaper rents, greater con-
veniences and give all an opportunity to
engage in productive work would be a real
solution for the high cost of living. Roadtown
ROADTOWN 27
eliminates all possible waste and relieves the
army of distributors of nine-tenths of their
present work, thus throwing these people into
productive labors.
Labor which results in the creation of a
concrete product — something that can be eaten
or worn is generally appreciated. Transpor-
tation, the far greater necessity, is not so
readily appreciated as a source of wealth, nor
is the waste in transportation so quickly seen
or remedied.
Our Disjointed Civilization.
Our factories and our farms — the places of
production — our houses and cities — places of
consumption, and our railroad trucks, delivery
wagons and dumb-waiters, means of transpor-
tation, have been developed by separate minds
— they work together — clumsily — wastefully.
Civilization is a black cabinet of plates and
doughnuts, arms and legs, and consuming
mouths dancing around in an uncoordinated
fashion, occasionally getting together and
serving each other, but more often missing the
mark — two hands going to one mouth, another
28 ROADTOWN
hand missing the mouth altogether; there is
no plan, no unity, no harmony, no mind behind
it all. The farm and factory, the railroad and
the city grow separately, each to serve the
other it is true, but the machine as a whole is
woefully disjointed and inefficient. We may
liken our present system of living to old style
harvesting. A binder, wonderful enough in
itself, left the bundles of grain strewn about
the field. They were shocked by hand.
Later they are gathered into wagons and
hauled to the farm yard and built into stacks.
Then the thresher comes and with another com-
plex machine delivers the grain, loose, through
a running spout, where men weigh it and sack
it and load it into wagons, which are as crude
as the threshing machine itself.
Compare this system, wonderful though it
be, with the combined header-thresher, which
at one operation cuts, threshes and delivers the
grain weighed and sacked into the wagon. In
the combination of the previous operations
many of the steps, the binding and hauling and
stacking and weighing drop out. The machine
simplified the whole process, it eliminates
ROADTOWN 29
waste, it represents a unity of plan, a harmony
of operation.
Our modern complex systems of production,
transportation and consumption, like the old-
fashioned method of harvesting, require many
separate machines. Take the one product of
butter for illustration: the farmer produces
milk, the milk hauler carts it to town, the
creamery man manufactures the butter, then
packs it into tubs and sells it to a dealer; the
dealer ships it to the city by rail and then an-
other truckman delivers it to a jobber which
means more trucking; the jobber molds the
butter into prints and boxes them. A wagon
takes it to a grocer where it is again stored,
sold, and goes the round of another wagon, a
dumb-waiter, a pantry, a waiter, a table, and
at last consumption. This is a sample story of
civilization, a heterogeneous mass of independ-
ently acting individuals and separate mechan-
isms, full of mechanical waste, full of human
waste, full of financial waste. The butter fat
as is now wastefully produced is worth twenty
cents in the farmer's milk pail, it cost two cents
to skim it and churn it, the rest is transporta-
30 ROADTOWN
tion. It is worth forty cents at the grocery-
store and fifty cents to one dollar on your
table, according to how much of your house-
hold distribution is done by your wife who
gives services gratis and how much by servants
whose arms and legs move only in response to
the rattle of the shekels. And how much
would this service of transportation cost if pro-
duction, transportation and consumption, like
the modern header-thresher, were built upon a
plan of coordination, that is, if the farmer's
dairy was on a transportation line with the
creamery, and the creamery on a line with the
kitchen where machinery and specialized labor
are available, and the kitchen was on a line
with the consumer's dining-room, and the only
expense of transportation was the cost of
power to move the material object and the cost
of labor to perform the actual processes of
manufacture that intervene between produc-
tion and consumption.
The Roadtown is a single unified plan for
the arrangement of these three functions of
civilization — production, transportation, and
consumption.
CHAPTER III
LINE DISTRIBUTION — THE LOGICAL OUTCOME
CIVILIZATION growing up in a sep-
arate and disjoined fashion has re-
sulted in a certain arrangement of the
population upon the face of the earth. At
first savage men roamed the plains and
forests seeking food. The advent of civ-
ilization, industrial and social cooperation,
taught men the advantage of gathering
themselves into cities. At first these cities
were provisioned from the country by means of
humans or animal beasts of burden, then water
transportation caused the development of
greater cities on rivers and harbors. With the
advent of the railroad, together with the trans-
portation agencies already mentioned, the pro-
visioning of cities became limited only by the
ability of the country district to support its
own population and that of the city.
31
32 ROADTOWN
The occupation of the city people was chiefly
that of manufacturing, trading and grafting
on the farmer and on each other. The inven-
tion of steam power made it economical to
assemble workmen into large factories which
added another cause to the growth of cities.
The use of this steam power forced the city
worker out of his home and into the more econ-
omical factory, thus developing the factory
system.
The continual growth of cities soon filled the
land with large groups of houses, crowding
each other for room. As the houses were built
closer and closer together, the amount of light
and air was shut out, in order that the distance
the workers lived from their work might not
increase. At first workers went from their
work to their houses on foot, later by means
of the horse car, still later by steam car and
now the electric car is supreme. As these
transportation facilities first used to get pro-
visions into the city and the manufactured
product out of it were utilized to get the work-
ers to and from their work, the houses began
to follow the transportation lines.
ROADTOWN 33
Transportation Determines the Form of
Cities.
As time and the expense of transportation
rather than distance were the elements that
governed the distance from the heart of the
city that could be used for workers' homes, the
utilization of fixed lines of traffic resulted in
the city building out along main streets,
trolleys and railroads. Along main lines of
traffic, as between two important cities, the
population began to group itself into lines.
This is the state of the distribution of popu-
lation to be found in the world to-day. But
the present distribution is imperfect. The
trolleys carry people to the street corner but
make no provision for getting them into their
homes or for getting the meals on the side-
board, the book from the library to the center
table, or the camphor from the drug store to
the sick room.
The means of conveying the necessities of
civilization is almost wholly that of rails, pipes
and wires. The former is the means of trans-
porting people and parcels, the second of
34 ROADTOWN
liquids and gases, the third of electricity in its
various forms.
These mechanical servants have been placed
in the streets which were first built as roadways
for carriages. In the streets, the pipes and
wires must be buried beneath the pavement at
great expense. Through these streets, fre-
quently full of curves and angles which offer
little trouble to the free moving horse-drawn
vehicle, the rails must be bent and the cars
slow down for curves. From beneath the
pavement the pipes and wires must be sep-
arately led into the basements of each build-
ing and up through successive stories to the
apartments above. Within the building, sep-
arate vertical car lines called elevators, must
be built and city transportation becomes a
matter of three dimensions with train service
running in from principal outlying points,
cross-town trolley lines and vertical elevators,
all separate schemes of transportation requir-
ing changes and delays, endless duplication,
colossal expense and criminal waste.
Now rails, pipes and wires can be most
economically laid in continuous straight lines.
ROADTOWN 85
In the case of railroads, the greater the speed
without stops the more the necessity for
straight lines. A car running at a speed of
forty miles per hour has sixteen times the force
for derailment as a car at ten miles, and there
is a like increase in the cost in power and time
to stop the car. Moreover, to be efficient the
railway should be where nothing will obstruct
the passage of trains. Pipes must be kept
from freezing, live wires from giving shocks
and yet all must be available for new installa-
tion and repairs. None of these needs are
filled by present city conditions ; all can be ful-
filled if the city is planned to fit the rail, pipe
and wire civilization of to-day instead of the
pedestrian and equestrian civilization of the
past.
Building in One Dimension.
The Roadtown is a scheme to organize pro-
duction, transportation and consumption into
one systematic plan. In an age of pipes and
wires, and high speed railways such a plan
necessitates the building in one dimension in-
stead of three — the line distribution of popula-
36 ROADTOWN
tion instead of the pyramid style of construc-
tion. The rail-pipe-and-wire civilization and
the increase in the speed of transportation is
certain to result in the line distribution of pop-
ulation because of the almost unbelievable
economy in construction, in operation and in
time. The people will return to Mother Earth
because it is in every way desirable for them
to do so and not because some merchant prince,
railroad king or social worker says they ought
to go.
In modern life an office building, store or
apartment house is considered especially for-
tunate if it has a rapid transit station near or
better still within the building. All the
inhabitants of the Roadtown will live upon the
main line and be near the station. They will
live there because the utilities of civilization can
be provided there more economically than else-
where. But the line distribution has yet an-
other significance of as great importance as the
more safe and economical distribution of peo-
ple, parcels, fluids and electricity.
The development of cities was originally
brought about by the desire of men to get close
ROADTOWN 37
together for industrial needs and social fellow-
ship. This same want for ready communica-
tion and distribution of men and things I have
shown can now be most completely fulfilled by
the city which will be strung out in a line. In
other words, the very laws which built the con-
gested cities will, with the construction of the
first section of the first Roadtown, surely mark
the beginning of their gradual dissemination.
Such a tendenc5T can already be seen at work,
but its development has not progressed far be-
cause of the isolation of the functions of house
construction and horizontal transportation
devices.
As soon as horizontal transportation is put
in the house, the skyscraper on its side, and is
pointed towards the endless country instead of
up against the force of gravity, and the won-
derful transportation devices now available
are installed, you will see the cities spread out
in lines amidst the fields and farms, as if by
magic. Indeed it will be the magic of econ-
omy, the natural force to which all of humanity
always promptly responds.
The height of the skyscraper is limited by
38 ROADTOWN
the stresses and strains on the steel, by the
instability of the foundation, by congestion of
the elevators. The length of the skyscraper
on its side has no limit for it is built on solid
ground, it has no lighting and ventilating prob-
lems. Its transportation system by the aid of
local and express service, by the fact that it can
run trains, not single cars, and can run many
trains following each other on one track and
not require a whole shaft for a single car as in
the case of the elevator, removes the mechanical
limitation of length of the horizontal sky-
scraper. We can build not only a thousand
feet, but a thousand miles and have every story
connected with every other story by rails, pipes
and wires.
A Line of City Through the Country.
The Roadtown will start at the end of the
present subways or other rapid transportation
systems of present cities or tap these lines far
enough out to get comparatively cheap land
and build out in the direction of other cities,
passing near enough to the smaller cities,
towns and villages to summarily attract much
ROADTOWN 39
of their renting population. This movement
will surely mark the "beginning of the end" of
such wasteful loafing centers for the few, and
the stagnant pools of wasted energy for the
many. It will be a line of city through the
country. It will take the apartment house to
the farmer and incidentally free the farmer
from the necessity of feeding the well-meaning
townsfolk who give him in return scant cloth-
ing, the use of a hitching post for his team —
sometimes ; a place to get his weekly paper and
a little social fellowship on the sidewalk Sat-
urday afternoons. It will give the subur-
banite all that he seeks in the country and all
that he regrets to leave in town. It will enable
him to play at farming, do real farming or
retain his city job. The people will go to the
land and take the best things of the city with
them, take in fact all that is good in the city
to-day and in addition much that is now
pigeon-holed as unused patents, because the
conglomeration of isolated homes and the crude
horse paths called streets, owned by "hold-up
men" called politicians, do not permit of the
general adoption of these great inventions.
CHAPTER IV
THE ROADTOWN PLAN OF CONSTRUCTION
THE first problem in making a village
or a city house is the excavation for
foundation and cellar. In the case of iso-
lated houses the cellar is dug by hand labor
and dirt carried away by horse-drawn carts.
Witness the difference in method between
such excavation and that of a canal, the
grading of a railroad or any other proj-
ect that is to be made in line. In the
latter case the steam shovel replaces the spade,
and the work train, the dump cart.
Those familiar with city subway construc-
tion will at first think the idea of a railway in
the basement is an expensive luxury. But
the excavation of the Roadtown basement
should be compared with the New York State
canal, not the New York Subway.
40
ROADTOWN 41
To be Built of Cement.
The Roadtown will be built of cement, fire
proof and vermin proof. Modern so-called
fire proof buildings are frequently destroyed
by fire. This is because they contain combus-
tible material. If material in a large building
gets on fire and through stairways and air
shafts sets fire to other combustibles, the whole
building is heated to the ignition point.
The horizontal Roadtown house, only two
stories high, cannot be destroyed in this
fashion. Even if a Roadtown were built of
Carolina pine, it would still be a safer fire risk
than modern fire proof buildings in cities. A
fire raging in a continuous house could as a last
resort be stopped by two sticks of dynamite.
In the city the fire line must be fought on all
sides of an ever enlarging circle. Dropping
this theoretical point we can say that the really
fire proof Roadtown can be made at a fraction
of the cost of making a building of similar en-
closing space semi-fire proof, which experience
has shown is the best that can be done with city
buildings of the box or tower type. The
42 ROADTOWN
Roadtown very likely will not carry fire in-
surance nor maintain a fire department, as
every house will have a fire hose which can be
instantly applied. The frightful expense and
loss of life (and recently the source of graft)
that our present civilization suffers because of
fire, will be told to the Roadtown children as
we now tell about Indian massacres.
Roadtown will be proof against the "cy-
clones" that are the evil genius of country life
in the South and West. As for earthquakes,
San Francisco's experience proves that rein-
forced concrete is the best earthquake resister
known.
Any building material may be used, but we
will here consider cement, poured into moulds,
as a standard.
Thomas A. Edison, whose efforts at perfect-
ing a method of molding complete houses by
pouring cement into molds, has attracted
world-wide attention, has donated to the Road-
town the use of his cement house patents.
The Roadtown, like the railroad, will get
much of its building material, such as sand and
stone, along the right of way, and haul it to its
ROADTOWN 43
place in the structure on the railroad which
will be the first part of a Roadtown to be con-
structed. Thus the expense will be greatly
reduced.
Wagon hauling and hand mixing, the heavi-
est items of expense in cement construction,
are entirely eliminated in Roadtown where the
concrete is mixed and poured from a machine
located on a work train.
The Railroad will be Noiseless.
The essential of the Roadtown being the
combination of transportation and house con-
struction, the Roadtown if invented in any age
before the present one would have been worth-
less. The horse-pulled vehicle or the steam
or gasoline engine would be a nuisance in any
part of a building used for a dwelling. Elec-
trical transportation, on the other hand, is a
perfectly refined method of locomotion and
well suited for indoor uses.
Of the various systems of transportation
devised and now available, I believe the Boyes
Monorail to be the most applicable to the
needs of a continuous house, and I have pre-
44 ROADTOWN
vailed upon Mr. Boyes to donate the use of his
patents to Roadtown.
This wonderful invention was perfected
after many years of intense application by a
thorough mechanic and electrician. It has
been demonstrated and found to be thoroughly
practical and is far in advance of either the
present two-railed electric railroads, or the
Gyroscopic types of Monorail cars which have
lately attracted considerable attention because
of their seeming disregard of the law of
gravity.
The Gyroscopic Monorail, at a great ex-
pense and complication, eliminates one rail, but
there is no particular gain in so doing, in fact
there is a distinct loss for the thing that limits
the speed of the ordinary electric car, is the
loss of grip on the rail, and in the Gyroscopic
Monorail the bearing surface of the steel
wheels is reduced to just one-half that of the
ordinary car.
The Boyes Monorail uses the principle of
the gyroscope used in the Brennan Mono-
rail with a difference that where the Bren-
ROADTOWN 45
nan gyroscope acts as a top the Boyes Mono-
rail is kept true by the heavy drive wheel which
acts on the principle of a hoop or rolling
wheel. The Boyes train is made in short cars
or sections rigidly coupled together with rub-
ber padded couplings. Each car or section
rides on a single concave leather faced wheel
that runs on a broad convex steel rail. This
wheel is set up within the body of the car, thus
permitting the car to straddle the track.
There is a door on either side of each eight-
foot car or section, which is opened and closed
electrically. Only six people enter at a door-
way, thus eliminating all delays and jams at
crowded stations.
The leather faced wheel grips the track to
such a great degree that it is practicable to
build the cars as light per passenger as is the
bicycle, thus giving great efficiency and power.
A train of the Boyes type to carry the same
passengers as the subway cars of New York,
weighs one-thirtieth as much. The power is
electrically fed to the train from a small
"third" rail.
46 ROADTOWN
Speed Possibilities.
I hesitate to make any predictions as to the
speed attainable in the Boyes Monorail. As
is generally known, the world's speed records
are now held by automobiles, not railway
trains. The record to date is about one hun-
dred and thirty-two miles an hour made by
Oldfield, at Ormond Beach, Florida. It is the
traction grip in the rubber tired wheel that
makes this speed possible. The Boyes car
will have this grip and instead of sand to run
on will have a rail from which it will have to
jump thirty inches to be derailed. The car
cannot skid, jump the track nor upset. It
does not carry the weight of its power creating
apparatus. It has no heavy parts but the
single wheel and its casings. The inventor
states that with the power now used on the
New York Subway trains a Boyes train carry-
ing the same number of passengers will attain
the speed of two hundred and fifty miles an
hour. I recently asked an automobile manu-
facturer what, at present, set the limit on the
speed autos. He replied, "The nerve of the
ROADTOWN 47
driver." The bearing parts of the monorail
can be made many times the strength required
for the speeds intended and thus reduce acci-
dents from broken parts to a minimum. I
have asked a number of engineers to give me
a reason why the speed predictions of Boyes
could not be attained. One replied, "It 's
never been done." Another said, "Municipal
politics."
Because I have spoken in favor of the Boyes
Monorail I do not wish the reader to infer that
the development of the Roadtown depends
upon the progress made by this invention.
We have noiseless electric automobiles to-day
and noiseless bicycles that serve well to demon-
strate the feasibility of building a noiseless
service for the purpose of Roadtown and such
a later system will indeed probably be installed
in the first demonstration section. No man of
a mechanical turn of mind will doubt for a
minute that noise in transportation can be
eliminated where it is desirable to do so.
The Roadtown transportation system will
be in the cellar. This idea will at first seem
strange, and many people will suggest that it
48 ROADTOWN
be put above ground thinking thus to save
expense and have the "view." I think a little
explanation will show that the basement is the
only logical location for the Roadtown trans-
portation line.
If it is above ground it will have to be fenced
off or elevated to prevent loss of life. If it is
fenced it will keep people from the land. If
it is elevated the stations will be expensive and
an eyesore. As for the idea of a view, we can
say that the Roadtown railroad is not for sight-
seeing any more than an elevator in a hotel.
If placed beside the house line it would destroy
the natural "view" and privacy of the home,
and the roof is reserved for a better use.
The basement is clearly the only logical
place to have the monorail where it will be
absolutely convenient and yet free the house
from the nuisance of living beside an elevated
railroad track. The expense of the basement,
where steam shovel and work train are utilized,
as already explained, will be comparatively
small, and the house above will provide a con-
tinuous covered passageway from the door of
one's apartment to the station. As for venti-
ROADTOWN 49
lation, which is a puzzling problem in city sub-
ways, it will be solved by a continuous opening
made by building the house three or four feet
above the ground; the Roadtown trains will
therefore run in a covered trench rather than
in a subway.
Because of the rail straddling plan the
Boyes car must be entered from both sides.
Three tracks will be required and these will be
arranged one beneath the other. The reason
for this is obvious: if arranged side by side,
passengers would have to climb up the height
of the car and down again. Arranged
vertically, they need climb only up or down.
Because the distance from rail level to car
floor level is practically eliminated in the
Boyes car, this climb will be but seven or eight
feet instead of twelve as with present train
service. The upper track will be for local
service. Passengers will walk from their
house along a continuous platform or hallway
to the local stations, which will be located about
100 yards apart. The object of having
definite stations or stopping places is simply
one of gaining speed by having the people in
50 ROADTOWN
groups. The platform will be continuous and
the trains can be stopped at any house desired
if there be a good reason for so doing.
About every five miles there will be an
express station. Here the people will climb
down eight feet, or sixteen if going the oppo-
site direction, and board a train that is not
bothered with frequent stops and can hence
make very high speed.
The following is a sample specification
of Roadtown train service as submitted by
William H. Boyes, using the Boyes Monorail
System at a speed of only ninety miles per
hour. Line from New York to Philadelphia,
ninety miles. Daily traveling population, one
to a family, 250 per mile, 11,250 to go each
way. 8,916 per hour for three rush hours.
Speed, ninety miles per hour; time of round
trip, two hours; trains five minutes apart;
stations, five miles apart. Trains, twenty-
four ; seating capacity per train, 336 ; capacity
of express service, 4,032 hourly. Local trains
oscillating between express stations each to
carry 224 passengers per hour, eighteen re-
quired.
ROADTOWN 51
This specification submitted by Mr. Boyes
gives a remarkably small equipment for the
traffic handled compared with present figures.
The chief difference is due to the high speed.
There are many who will not believe that a
ninety-mile schedule will be maintained, not
so many perhaps as would two years ago have
refused to believe that man could fly from
New York to Philadelphia, an account of the
accomplisment of which lies on my desk as I
write. For those to whom seeing is necessary
to believing, the speed above may be cut in
half, which will then be about that in the New
York Subway. The express trains will then
run on a two-and-a-half -minute schedule and
twice as many will be required, but the cost
will still be much lower than present day com-
muting service and efficient enough to make
the entire Roadtown from New York to Phila-
delphia as accessible for commuters as is now
a suburban home fifteen miles from New York
and a half mile from the railroad station.
The single train on the local track will make
a round trip between express stations about
every fifteen minutes. Those near the middle
52 ROADTOWN
of the section will catch the train going in
either direction, as the time for the express to
travel the distance of one express station is
negligible. In each Roadtown home there
will be an electric buzzer which, when the
switch is so turned, will announce the approach
of a train in sufficient time to allow one to get
to the station. The buzzer will have two dis-
tinct sounds, one for trains in either direction.
Roadtown parcels, such as are not cared for
in a small mechanical carrier described in
Chapter VI, will be hauled on the local trains.
Roadtown freight service will be at night on
the express tracks, the trains stopping at
stations located at suitable distances and
distinct from the passenger stations. At
these freight stations there will be elevators
or inclines delivering freight to or receiv-
ing it from the land outside, while furni-
ture, etc., for the houses will be elevated to the
platform above and carried on the very early
trips of the local trains to one's door.
Wrecks on such a railroad system can only
occur from actual breaking of some working
part, a comparatively rare cause of present
ROADTOWN 53
wrecks. The local track collision cannot occur
as there is only one train in a section. On the
two express tracks, "tail-end" collisions will be
prevented by a block system that turns off the
power automatically when trains approach
within a certain distance of each other. This
system is in operation in the New York Sub-
ways.
The Street Upon the Roof.
Private stairs from each home will lead
down to the monorail platform and up to the
roof. In the center of the roof will be a
promenade which will be covered, and in the
winter enclosed with glass panels and steam
heated. On the outer edges of the roof will
be a path for bicyclists and skaters, who will
use rubber tired roller skates. The monorail,
which is the business transportation system of
Roadtown, will be placed out of sight and run
at high speed, but the roof promenade will be
the "street" for recreation and pleasure. In
winter the promenade will be a continu-
ous sun parlor; in summer a shaded walk.
There will be benches in alcoves along the
54 ROADTOWN
way and occasional towers over the prom-
enade and tower effects along the edges of the
roof beyond the cycle paths or some other
architectural effects to break the monotony.
These towers will be used as cooperative
centers, such as stores, cooking and power,
recreation, schools, nurseries, etc. The tower
effects are matters of architectural ingenuity,
and many architects are already interested in
finding ways to lend variety and beauty to the
Roadtown as they have to our existing public
ways.
Certainly no street or boulevard in the
history of the world was ever more uniquely
located. The splendid view to be obtained
from such a promenade in a dust-free and
smoke-free country can hardly be pictured to
a city bred man or a countryman jogging
along the hedge and weed throttled country
road. The view across the near gardens and
more distant grain fields, and back over woods
and hills to the dim line where land meets sky,
will cure forever a score of Latin-named
diseases which the eye specialist tells us come
from gazing through the dust-laden street or
ROADTOWN 55
across the dingy court into our neighbor's
kitchen window.
It is upon the roof that the Roadtown will
be upon dress parade. Here maids with their
lovers will stroll of evenings and matrons with
their baby carriages on Sunday afternoons.
It is here that children will have never ending
sport. Skating and cycling can have an
unprecedented opportunity to develop for
health and pleasure. It is here that Easter
hats will be shown and neighbors' crops dis-
cussed and new acquaintances made and local
pride developed.
The question naturally arises as to the sound
of conversation from the roof reaching the liv-
ing-rooms or the sound from the rooms reach-
ing the roof. The cement walls are practically
sound proof and for sounds to be heard from
roof to house or house to house requires that it
pass into the open air and bend through a 180
degree angle. Sound does not travel in that
way as one may readily prove by trying to
shout around the corner of a ledge of rock or
over a stone building. With all windows and
doors wide open in the Roadtown home, the
56 ROADTOWN
only sound of ordinary magnitude to be heard
will be from the singing of birds and the play
of children in front of the window. The un-
canny noise of city streets and of quarrelsome
neighbors across the air shaft will be missing.
People who cannot content themselves with
the quiet of a Roadtown home will have to use
the telephone, electric music, roof promenade
or go to the social center. Promenaders can-
not stare into nor listen at their neighbors'
windows. The Roadtowner's home is his
castle in the truest sense of the word, and more
private, notwithstanding the close proximity to
neighbors, and hence more consecrated to
family life than any previous style of dwelling
known.
The Roadtown will have no streets because
it will need none. As it is built through the
country, there will, of course, be roads as well
as streets to cross. Here the monorail will run
under, and the roof bridge over the roads. At
such road crossings and such other places
where roads are built back into the country,
stables and garages will be provided.
The natural desire to drive one's own
ROADTOWN 57
vehicles up to the door of his own house will
cause an occasional remonstrance against the
plan at first, but as people find that there is no
need of such roadways they will come to con-
sider the Roadtown road crossings as their
front door, when viewed from the auto or
equestrian's standpoint, and no more think of
the necessity of a private roadway to their own
house than that of having their auto sent up the
tenth story of an apartment house.
Those who wish to pay a visit to a Road-
town home will come to the nearest point
where the railroad crosses the Roadtown or if
traveling by horse or auto where the public
road crosses the Roadtown and will leave their
vehicle in charge of a caretaker and have their
name 'phoned in as one does at an up-to-date
apartment house or hotel. If the Roadtowner
is at home, the caller will then take the mono-
rail or the roof promenade as the distance or
his inclination dictates, and thus reach the door
of his friend's home.
Such a system will give the humblest Road-
towner the opportunity of the high class apart-
ment house dweller to say that he is not at
58 ROADTOWN
home to unwelcome visitors, and yet the Road-
town home built on the ground floor with its
windows looking out into a private garden will
have all the home-like simplicity of a cottage,
and at the same time modern conveniences and
luxuries which cannot be found in any King's
palace.
CHAPTER V
CIVILIZATION THROUGH PIPES AND WIRES
THE economies of a continuous house
under one roof and of railroad and
steam shovel, rather than hand and dump cart
methods, are sufficient to make the line con-
struction far more economical than any method
now in vogue, but even they are greatly ex-
ceeded by the additional saving involved in the
installation and operation of the pipes and
wires of the Roadtown.
Witness the present situation. The farm-
er's house is alone in the middle of his
farm. For every pipe, wire or rail utility with
which he is supplied, he must have a plant of
his own. If he wishes steam heat, he must put
in a boiler; if he wishes electric lights, an
engine and dynamo.
In practice the farmer, with the occasional
59
60 ROADTOWN
exception of the rural telephone, is limited to
the products of civilization that can be hauled
home in a wagon.
The city man is a little better off. City
dwellers are close together, close enough that
one electric, gas or steam producing plant will
do for many hundreds or thousands of families,
but by the present plan which enables them to
have these improvements, they pay not only
the expense of periodic tearing up of the pave-
ments and the house foundation, but a far
greater price in the loss of air, sunlight and
privacy.
The Roadtown has these God-given utili-
ties of country air and light on two sides of the
house. Upon the other two sides it has blank
walls, but the examination of the average
isolated residence will show that there is little
to be gained in light or air by the two extra
sides and much to be lost in privacy. Upon
the two remaining sides, i. e., the top and
bottom, the Roadtown house has its sidewalk
on the roof and its transportation by rails,
pipes and wires that are now in the city streets,
it has on a far better and economical plan in
ROADTOWN 61
the basement, now used principally to store
old trunks, rubbish and coal.
Picture the installation of a new pipe line
through a paved street. The expense and the
unsightliness, the danger to human life — and
this has nothing to do with getting the pipes
into a private house.
Now suppose you are a resident on that line
and conclude a couple of months later to install
the utility in your home. Again the pavement
is torn up, a gang of laborers spend several
days on the job, and you as consumer will pay
the bill either in a lump or as stiff rates on the
utility sold. The result of this clumsy system
has been that pipe and wire utilities in the city
are limited to those people who use them to a
sufficient extent to stand this criminal waste
and expense.
Moreover, in all large cities the matter of
installing pipe or wire conveyed utilities is also
a question of reckoning with franchise-selling
politicians and private monopolists who gen-
erally work "hand in hand."
Compare these conditions, mechanical and
political, with the Roadtown where all pipes
62 ROADTOWN
and wires will be bracketed in a runway be-
neath the floor of a machine-made house on
land at farm prices. To put in a new pipe
conveyed utility will cost the price of the
twenty-one feet of main and a branch pipe
leading to the apartment above through suit-
able openings made when the building is con-
structed. The expense will be about equal to
that of maintaining the red lanterns which are
now placed about the torn up city streets.
As a result of these differences there will be
added to the Roadtown home — and I mean to
the home of the man of average means — a
number of utilities now available only to the
rich, or not available at all.
Beginning with the following paragraph I
will enumerate some of the inventions that will
be available in the Roadtown home. I may
include in this list some inventions which,
while demonstrated on a small scale, may for
some reason not now discernible, develop an
objection or difficulty in its use. But for
every such a one that I may here include,
there will be several others that science has
already or will yet devise and which can be
ROADTOWN 63
installed in Roadtown as soon as perfected and
demonstrated with no more expense than there
would be if it were put in when the houses
were built. This feature alone is a tremen-
dous argument in favor of the Roadtown, for
every previous form of house construction once
finished is set in its equipment and soon gets
behind the age and must be torn down to make
room for the new. At this time considerable
humorous comment is being made in the news-
papers over the tearing down of a twenty-two
story building in Wall Street to make room
for a forty story one. The old one is only
thirteen years old. The Roadtown will always
be "modern," and increase in efficiency as it
increases in length while the separate building
is a complete unit with its height and utilities
stationary.
Water.
The water systems of great cities are enor-
mously expensive, as it is usually necessary to
build great conduits dozens and even as much
as one hundred and fifty miles long. The
trouble with such cities is that a very large
64 ROADTOWN
population must be supplied with water from
a very limited area. The Roadtown with a
population of about 1,000 to the mile will be
able to get its water supply from suitable
sources all along the way. The length of line
to be supplied from one public station will
not be great, but the entire main may be
opened so that one station can relieve another
in case of excessive use of water at any given
point.
Sewerage.
The sewage system of the Roadtown will,
like the water system, be built in comparatively
small units, and will require none of the large
and expensive sewers seen in city systems.
Wherever the Roadtown crosses a natural
valley in the land the sewage can be led off to a
reasonable distance from the house line in pipes
and used in irrigating non-food crops. The
income to be derived from the use of this
sewage for fertilization and irrigation will be
a considerable source of profit and wholly
without the expense attached to city sewage
disposal works because of distance from the
ROADTOWN 65
land and the fact that the point of the city
sewer outlet is almost always below the level
of land available for such uses.
Heating.
The Roadtown heating system will be of hot
water circulated by pumps. The heating
plants will be located every two or three miles,
which, according to the engineers' figures will
be more economical than to have them either
at greater or less distance. The temperature
will be regulated to suit each and every tenant
by the use of the thermostat with a push button
regulator in each room of every apartment.
This simple, but marvelously useful device, is
now in general use in thousands of first class
hotels.
Refrigeration.
The refrigerating system of Roadtown
which will be required for food and drinking
water purposes could be turned into the radi-
ators and a circulation of cooled water or brine
pumped through the houses. I do not say that
such house cooling will be established, for the
66 ROADTOWN
Roadtown house, through which the breeze will
have a full sweep, and in which the electrical
fans will be plentiful, will have little need for
a system of house cooling, but if the people in
hot countries wish it and care to pay for it,
eventually they can have it.
Drinking Water.
The next utility for the Roadtown house
will be that of pure, cool distilled water for
drinking purposes, cooled only to a healthful
temperature. Because of the small expense
for piping, this separation of the system of
drinking water from that used for bathing and
for spraying the lawn will mean that no
method known to science for purifying the
former need be spared.
In present city life the peddling of so-called
"spring water" in bottles, is a farcical affair,
which would have about as much chance to
survive in Roadtown as an independent oil
producer shipping oil in barrels would have
in competing with the trust's tank cars and
pipe lines. If the Roadtown is piped for re-
frigeration, cooling will be very simple. If
ROADTOWN 67
this is not done the coolers may be placed in
the basement and filled with ice manufactured
at the central refrigeration plant and dis-
tributed by train. In either case, the efficiency
will be great as compared with any present
system.
Bath and Toilet.
It goes without saying that every home in
Roadtown will be provided with good bath and
toilet facilities. Because of the fact that the
house is of cement and has no lath and plaster
ceiling to get soaked, shower baths will prob-
ably be much in vogue in Roadtown. If at
any time it proves desirable to give up the
space for the purpose there can be shower
baths installed in every sleeping-room at a cost
of only a few dollars for each. The soap for
bath and wash basin will probably be liquid,
and while there will not be enough used to
make it worth while to pipe it, it can be sup-
plied ten gallons at a time by a man who will
make the rounds and fill the reservoirs at each
home. This is comparatively a small matter
and I merely mention it to show the extent to
68 ROADTOWN
which the natural cooperation of line house
building will gradually lead.
Gas.
For light cooking and local heating in the
Roadtown home, to such extent as is desirable,
gas will be used.
Vacuum.
During the last few years a great vacuum
sweeper craze has swept the country. We are
literally deluged with every type of apparatus,
from systems for installation in hotels and
office buildings, or wagon outfits that chase
about the street and run a hose into the parlor
window, to the little pop gun arrangement
that is worked by hand. The ease of adap-
tability of the best features of vacuum clean-
ing systems to Roadtown is too apparent to
need comment further than to say that a small
pipe, with an opening at each home, and a
suction fan every half mile, will be sufficient to
give the best possible results.
A further use of this vacuum may be made
in connection with automatic movement of
ROADTOWN 69
windows, doors, etc. Compressed air is now
frequently used for this purpose as in elevator
doors in office buildings. Vacuum will, of
course, work equally well.
Disinfecting Gas.
A pipe dream of Roadtown that is abso-
lutely practical, cheap and a crying need, will
be gas for disinfection.
Electric Light.
Electricity for lighting will, of course, be
available in Roadtown at a fraction of the
present cost.
Electric Power.
Electricity will be used for fans, vibrators
for massage, shoeshining, and other household
devices that may demand it as time rolls on.
Besides this there will be an industrial use for
power which I will discuss in a later chapter.*
* Until some cheaper source of power is developed electric
heating will remain an expensive luxury.
70 ROADTOWN
Telephones.
Electric buttons and signals and bells can
be used for the "top" and "bottom" doors of
the house, signaling to central stations when
preferable to the telephone. The telephone,
the cheapest of the pipe and wire group of civ-
ilizing agents, common though it is, has not yet
come into universal use. In New York City-
alone there are over three million people who
have no telephones and in the United States
there are 60,000,000 deprived of that great
necessity. In Roadtown the cost of installing
telephones will be practically the cost of the
instruments, switch-boards and twenty-one feet
of wire. If the automatic system is used,
which is likely, in local service between a public
service center and the houses they wait upon,
the cost will be but those of interest on installa-
tion and cost of repairs. A telephone expert
has estimated that the system complete would
be less than ten dollars per family, and that the
expense of operation or telephone rent less
than one dollar a year, net, per family, or eight
cents per month.
ROADTOWN 71
Dictograph.
At the present date there is in practical
operation a loud speaking telephone called the
dictograph. If this modern invention is in-
stalled in the Roadtown home, it will be pos-
sible by simply pressing a button to talk over
the telephone while sitting in a chair or lying
in bed. This instrument has been most suc-
cessfully utilized in conveying music, which, if
received through a horn can scarcely be told
from the first-hand product. This wonderful
invention, as many other similar ones that now
exist, cannot be put into practical use on a
large and systematic scale, because of the
present city construction, the conduit and other
trusts.
Since the preceding paragraph was written,
M. K. Turner, the inventor and proprietor of
the dictograph, has donated the use of all of
his wonderful patents to the Roadtown, and
in addition has offered to design an entire
system of loud speaking telephones especially
adapted to Roadtown use, because of the great
72 ROADTOWN
uplifting influence he recognizes in its prin-
ciples when put into practice.
This donation, together with the house pour-
ing scheme of Mr. Edison and the Boyes
Monorail, gives to Roadtown fundamental
patents on house building, transportation and
intelligence transmission — the three great es-
sentials of a new civilization.
Telegraphone.
The telegraphone, or recording telephone,
is also a most wonderful invention. The teleg-
raphone records any sound sent over a tele-
phone by means of magnetic changes in a
disc or wire. These steel disc records or wire
records can then be reproduced any number of
times with no loss of distinctness. As the
dictograph may be used to give a sermon, lec-
ture or piece of music to any number of peo-
ple at one time, so the telegraphone may be
used to record and repeat it any number of
times.
I could add other inventions to the list, but
will not, for these already given, though all
practical existing devices, will Le so wonderful
ROADTOWN 73
in application that I will not extend the list to
any less thoroughly proven inventions, lest the
reader who can but judge from the viewpoint
of the present imperfect city civilization, con-
fuse the Roadtown which is the plan grouping
of proven inventions with the dreams of novel-
ists who revel in inventions yet to be.
CHAPTER VI
R0ADT0WN HOUSEKEEPING
THOUGH it is true that some work,
which in the past rested heavily upon the
shoulders of women, has been taken into the
factory, notably the spinning, weaving and
clothes making trades, and on the farm the
making of butter, still the bulk of labor of the
women of the average household comes in that
group of washing, ironing, dusting, sweeping,
scrubbing, making beds, cooking and dish-
washing. This is woman's work in the most
of our homes, and a servant's work in the
homes of the rich.
Woman's Work not Specialized,
Industrial progress has not yet applied to
this work of women the specialization and
labor saving machinery that has sent forward
the general work of the world at such a rapid
74
ROADTOWN 75
pace. Another way of expressing the same
idea is to say that in at least nine-tenths of the
households, the woman is the household,
servant. If the work be assigned to outsiders,
then the privacy of the family circle is broken
up and the dearest ties of earth are disturbed
by intruders. At present there are two ways
out of the difficulty. The way of the rich is
the employment of household servants. To
counteract the disturbance of family life an
elaborate system of servant etiquette has been
established by means of which the servant is
made to resemble, as much as possible, the
cookstove or the family horse. This satisfies
the family, but is disagreeable to the servant,
and incidently keeps a worker out of produc-
tive effort, raises the cost of living to every-
body, and deprives her of the most normal
expression of womanhood — that of marrying
and coddling her own children.
The second solution is for those too poor to
employ servants. It consists in eulogizing the
"homely virtues" and writing poems about the
duties of women in the home and artfully asso-
ciating the scouring of a brass kettle with the
76 ROADTOWN
instinct of motherhood. This effort to satisfy
the women in the home in playing the personal
servant to the rest of the family by enshrining
the dish-rag and broom is nothing new in the
history of the world. Those who have bene-
fited from the work of others have always been
quick to quote scripture to keep the worker on
the j ob, and as long as there is no other way to
get the work done, this plastering over of dirty
work with beautiful thoughts is indeed a make-
shift virtue, but one of which we shall some
day be thoroughly ashamed.
In the Roadtown, this problem, old as civil-
ization, will be solved, not by bringing in out-
side workers to break up family life, but by
sending most of the present work out of the
home and simplifying that which must remain
until the task becomes so light that each mem-
ber of the family will perform his share of the
housekeeping just as he now dresses himself,
or walks to catch the trolley car.
No Laundry Work at Home.
The first function, washing and ironing, has
long since been made an industrial function by
ROADTOWN 77
the rich everywhere, and also by the middle
class in our cities. Farmers' wives and the
wives of the city laborers still do home laundry-
ing. In the Roadtown, with its perfect system
of transportation, the trouble of sending soiled
clothes to the cooperative laundry will be very
simple as compared with the present wasteful
method of city collection of laundry. The
service will indeed be so cheap that I fancy
Roadtowners will vote to add the expense of
the laundry to the charge for rent, thus doing
away with the cost of accounts and collections.
This would put a premium upon cleanliness,
to be sure, and might result in a slight increase
of the total expense since our clothes would
be washed more often.
In connection with the laundry will be a
pressing and cleaning establishment which will
likewise be run cooperatively. The pressing
machine now used by clothing manufacturers
will keep people looking spick and span for a
mere trifle.
How far the Roadtowners will carry the
idea of a blanket rate to cover the cost for all
these 'hinq-s denends on traits in human nature
78 ROADTOWN
that are pretty hard to anticipate. We force
people to cooperate, to build parks and statues
to beautify our cities. Do we want to tax
them for a chance to be well groomed, or do
we prefer to see the other fellow slouchy so
that we will look better by comparison ? I for
one, believe in allowing civic pride to include
live citizens as well as marble statues of the
dead.
Dusting and Sweeping.
Dusting and sweeping must be done at
home, we cannot send the house out, but we
can pipe the house for suction sweeping and
discard forever the broom, clothes brush and
that arch nuisance, the feather duster, which
is used to chase the dust from room to room
without getting rid of it. Scrubbing and
mojjping will be greatly simplified by the
cement construction and the convenience of
water and sewage. These periodic tasks will
be grouped into trades, so that they can, when
desirable, be given over to professional cleaners
as is window washing in city buildings.
ROADTOWN 79
Making Beds by Machinery.
The care of the beds is the next item on our
list. The Roadtown sleeping-room will in the
daytime have the appearance of a sitting-room
or library. One essential piece of furniture
will be a couch or divan with good springs
upholstered with fire proof material. Plush,
leather and linen divan and chair covers will
be used alternately to suit the seasons and
varying requirements. The divan forms the
foundation of the bed. The bedding including
a light pad or mattress will be made about a
foot longer than is customary. At the foot
this bedding and pad will be fastened together
by a metal clasp, or "bedding hanger" on the
order of a trousers-hanger. In the morning
instead of making up the bed — that is, care-
fully folding up all the germs and foul odors,
the bed will be suspended by the hanger in an
adjoining fresh air closet. By reversing the
action of the rod supporting the bedding, which
describes an arc over the unfolded divan, the
bedding is spread neatly in place — the bed is
80 ROADTOWN
made. This closet in which the bedding hangs
freely exposed to the air has one side, or rather
edge, against the outside wall of the building.
This wall space will be formed of shutters
which admit of free circulation of air, thus the
bed is aired every day and all day. But there
are certain species of "germs," as every house-
keeper can testify, that will survive this fresh
air device, for them another provision will be
made. This closet will be piped for a certain
kind of gas which will be selected by the Road-
town biologist. At stated intervals the out-
shutters will be tightly closed as well as
door of the closet and the bedding fumi-
ed instead of aired. This method can also
be used to disinfect clothing.
There will be few rats or mice in the Road-
town home, for there will be little food left
around to attract them, and no places for them
to gnaw through or build their nests. In the
average city building used for factory pur-
poses, the damage from rats and vermin, I am
told, is often over 10 per cent of the gross
sales.
ROADTOWN 81
Cooperative Cooking Practical.
Cooperative cooking, in spite of the first
natural antipathy, has gained considerable
ground in city life. We find it in two forms,
the dining-out habit and the delicatessen habit.
The first is expensive of time and money, and
destroys the most delightful hours of home
life. The second is likewise expensive and re-
sults in a diet consisting chiefly of bread,
cheese, cold meat and pickles. The weakness
in both systems is in the matter of imperfect
transportation. In the first case the people
must be taken to the food, and hence out of the
home. In the second, the food must be
brought into the home by a system of delivery
that greatly increases expense and limits the
quality, quantity, and variety of the available
meal. The Roadtown, built in the one straight
horizontal line, will make possible the use of a
mechanical delivery system which is not now
available even for hotel service.
The mechanical carrier will be on the order
of that used in the Library of Congress as a
82 ROADTOWN
"book railroad." It is inexpensive, noiseless,
and can by means of a "key" be set to switch
automatically at the house for which the "car"
or "carrier" is intended.
The Roadtown cooking will not be done in a
single kitchen, but in a number of large estab-
lishments, such as bakeries, creameries, boiling,
roasting establishments, etc. The prepared
foods will then be sent in suitable quantities
to serving stations located about half a mile
apart, and there kept hot in the warming
closets. Here the frying, broiling, and other
such types of cooking will be performed to
order.
The bill-of-fare will be sent out by Road-
town mail. The people will order by 'phone
and the foods will be on the sideboard in the
Roadtown dining-room in less time than it
takes to bring it by the two-legged route from
Delmonico's kitchen to his dining-room. But
in the dining-room a difference arises. The
carriers must be opened and the dishes and
food arranged upon the table by the women
folks — a homely virtue left that the household
poet may not be entirely without material.
ROADTOWN 83
The usual meal will require two carriers, one
of which will be heated, and the other contain-
ing butter, milk, ices, etc., will be chilled.
Many changes of fashion will be required in
the form and material of dishes for containing
and serving food — changes that will doubtless
"upset" the good dames who have found virtue
in soup tureens that can slop over but it is
needless to add that their Roadtown daughters
will be more "upset" at the thought of a return
to present customs.
At the close of the Roadtown meal, the
dishes, food remnants and soiled linen, will be
put into the carrier, and dropped down a little
chute where they will travel merrily to the
public dish-washery. Here a few men with
the aid of machinery will do the work which
now occupies half a hundred mothers while
their families adjourn to the library, music-
room or to indulge in a nap.
In the Roadtown household there will be no
furnaces to tend, no ashes to haul out, and no
marketing to do. The garbage waste will be
only the table refuse which will be placed in a
paraffined paper receptacle and sent back with
84 ROADTOWN
the dishes. A bag for waste cloth and paper
will complete the waste disposal system.
The End of Household Drudgery.
In such an environment with the baby cared
for by experts in the nursery or kindergarten
only a thousand feet away, the mother will
have time to operate an electric sewing,
knitting, or one of many other automatic and
noiseless machines, work in the garden, read,
visit, or attend the theater, lecture hall or
church. Indeed the Roadtown woman will be
free to do anything and everything she chooses
except home drudgery.
The Roadtown idea will at first produce a
long low wail from the thousands of men
readers which will begin and end with a plea
for "mother's cooking." The Roadtown cook-
shop is cooperative, but the dining-room is not.
And the cookshop will be there to fill the need
of the cooperators, not to make money. If
there is demand it will have uncooked food to
send out as well as cooked food. Nor will
there be any law against the bringing into one's
home the fruits of one's own garden, berry
ROADTOWN 85
patch, and poultry yard. Roadtown folks that
keep a cow can take their choice between set-
ting the milk in the spring and letting the
cream rise or sending the milk to the creamery
where it is aerated, chilled, pasteurized, and
bottled, and the fat contents standardized, and
thus sent back as 4 per cent milk to drink
and 20 per cent cream for the strawberries.
Personally having tasted both kinds I prefer
the scientific product.
Every Roadtown home will have a boiler for
hot water, a chafing dish and as much more
cooking apparatus as may be desired. The
wealthy matron of to-day keeps alive the senti-
ment of mother's cooking by making the tea,
frosting the cake or making the salad dressing.
The Roadtown mother can do the same, and
as much more cooking as she likes, but once the
opportunity is given for people to find the
actual economy of cooperation and to see the
folly of heating up a whole house to do one
family's cooking, the amount of cooking
mothers will do will be decidedly limited.
Sentiments can bar out progress for a while,
but where there is a great economical saving
86 ROADTOWN
with nothing to lose but sentiment, economy
generally wins. How would you, Mr. Home-
is-sacred-man, like to thresh or flail the wheat
by hand in order that the family might eat pies
made of hand threshed wheat as well as to eat
mother's pies made of machine prepared
flour?
This game of jollying mothers into playing
household flunkies by complimenting their
products is getting thin, and a lot of mothers
are beginning to see through it.
The cooperative preparation of food will
have many indirect effects. A Roadtown ten
miles in length could well afford to have its own
canning factory, cold storage, and, if the
trusts become too dictatorial, also its own pack-
ing house. The Pure Food Law in Roadtown
will be a dead-letter, for the buyers will be food
experts and will have nothing to gain by de-
frauding the people, or helping to keep them in
ignorance. With a double cause for watchful-
ness, economy and health, it is hardly likely that
such a buyer would find it worth while attempt-
ing to go in partnership with food adulterators.
Certainly the inducement to adulterate is much
ROADTOWN 87
greater in the world to-day, for every man
involved in it, profits by the practice, the
consumer alone, woefuly ignorant of the whole
subject, is the only dupe.
Not only will the Roadtown buyer get pure
food, but he will get all food at wholesale
rates. The frightful waste, due to the putting
up of food in small cans, bottles and cartons,
is little appreciated. I recently tested this
principle by buying olive oil. The oil was
priced me at $1.80 a gallon, but the oil I
secured in fifty cent bottles I found cost me
$7.00 a gallon. Cotton seed oil was priced at
sixty cents a gallon. I purchased a five-cent
bottle and found that I had paid at the rate of
$2.25 a gallon. These are indisputable facts
and they could be multiplied indefinitely. In
barrel or car lots the above gallon prices would
be greatly reduced.
All Roadtown foods can be bought in bulk
direct from the makers at makers' rates. The
vegetables will be crisp and fresh from the
Roadtown gardens. The profits of the mid-
dlemen, of retailers, of adulterators and adver-
tisers, the cost of bottles and cans, of delivery
88 ROADTOWN
boys and bad grocery bills will certainly be
eliminated with . ne fell swoop. It will reduce
the cost of living, mark you, at such a rate that
the unsophisticated will confuse a Roadtown
meal with a charitable soup kitchen. But if
you don't believe this, write to your country
cousins and find out just what is the producer's
price on the material out of which a meal is
made.
CHAPTER VII
THE SERVANT PROBLEM IN ROADTOWN
THERE will be no servant problem in
Roadtown, as there will be no need for
servants.
89
CHAPTER VIII
ROADTOWN AGRICULTURE,
MARKET gardens near our cities are
worth several hundreds of dollars per
acre. But there are millions of acres of land
more fertile than a Brooklyn market garden
that cannot be used because there is no way to
get fertilizer to it or products away. Trans-
portation is more important to land values
than fertility.
A modern city of a hundred thousand in-
habitants is about six miles in diameter, within
"an air line" mile of the edge of that city will
be about twenty square miles of land, but this
land will average three and one half miles from
the markets which are usually clustered in the
center of the city, but if the street system is
of the checker-board type, the edge of the city
between the compass points will be five miles
by street from the markets.
90
ROADTOWN 91
A Roadtown with a hundred thousand in-
habitants will have within a mile of its house
line "edge," or "center," two hundred square
miles of land area, ten times as much as in the
above case, and this land will average but half
a mile from the market to which the gardener
must needs transport his produce, which is only
one-tenth the distance under the present day
conditions.
Another advantage of Roadtown for inten-
sive agricultural development is that, because
of the numerous other functions that transpor-
tation is to serve, Roadtown agriculture has a
perfected system of transportation immedi-
ately at its service to say nothing of an im-
mense consuming population on the line.
The first impression of a casual reader when
Roadtown agriculture is mentioned, will be
that reference is made to the play-farming,
chrysanthemum and chicken breeding indulged
in by suburbanites. On the contrary, though
suburbanites living in Roadtown will un-
doubtedly play at farming much to their phys-
ical and mental betterment, we are here
speaking of the agriculture that will be the
92 ROADTOWN
leading industry of the fully developed Road-
town.
The trouble in grasping the possibilities of
Roadtown agriculture comes from the diffi-
culty of renouncing our old viewpoint. The
typical farmer with his house in the middle of a
quarter section of land, half of which is fallow,
and on the other half of which he carelessly
grows food for live stock of which only 6 per
cent of the nutriment is recovered in the form
of meat, will be inclined to make light of the
idea of farm houses being built touching each
other. On the other hand the city dweller, es-
pecially of the older Eastern cities, which were
located chiefly in reference to navigation and
are more likely to be surrounded with water,
6wamp, rock and sand than by soil, find that
when the little remaining land has paid toll to
railroad and coal yards, millionaire villas, and
dear parks and land held by speculators, who
discourage its agricultural improvements, there
is little remaining to give one the picture of the
close proximity of the consumer and the food
supply.
In spite of the previous bias of these two
ROADTOWN 93
viewpoints, those familiar with the possibilities
of intelligent agriculture will see nothing
strange in the prediction that the farmer of the
future will live next door to the "city" con-
sumer of his wares.
Sufficient Land to Support Population.
In the first place, the locations of Roadtown
will be through districts where there is little
loss through uncultivatable soil. With twen-
ty-one foot houses, there would be almost two
and one-half acres per family for each mile one
goes back from the Roadtown line. Thus
within a mile (counting both sides) of the
house line will be five acres per family. But
in no section of the Roadtown will all the
families be engaged in agriculture. In typic-
ally agricultural sections of the country to-day
about one-third of the population live in vil-
lages and towns. This population is composed
of retired farmers, traders and professional
men who serve the farm population. In Road-
town civilization this population would live in
Roadtown lines. Near cities the commuting
population and everywhere the manufacturing
04 ROADTOWN
population who are only engaged in agricul-
ture on a small scale, or not at all, will release
more land for the Roadtown farmer. If the
proportion of agriculture to other enterprises
is the same as in the country at large, the
area available to the support of an agricultural
family within a mile of Roadtown will be about
twelve acres.
But we have limited our calculation to land
within a mile of the house line — why? Evi-
dently for argument's sake only, for there is no
other reason. In the country districts children
frequently walk two or two and a half miles to
school. The average distance from the post
office is three or four miles. The average haul
to the railroad, five to seven. The average dis-
tance to the other good things of civilization
is so great that the farmer doesn't go at all,
he is often referred to as a "Hayseed," un-
sophisticated, civilized to the extent of the civ-
ilization that can be shipped by rail and be
hauled home in a wagon. The Roadtown will
pour into the farm home all the luxuries and
refreshments of civilization at its best. In
return it brings him a new problem in the
ROADTOWN 95
relative location of his home to the land he
cultivates. The result will be a wonderful re-
arrangement of the whole scheme of agricul-
ture. The land, whether owned by private
individuals, the Roadtown corporation or the
Federal government, will be cut up into plots,
larger and larger in size as the distance from
the Roadtown increases.
Next to the house on both sides will be plots
or gardens about the width of the house, and
probably partitioned from the neighbor's by
trellises of vines or hedges of shrubbery.
These plots will be of sufficient depth to give
ample privacy to one's doors and windows.
These front yards — there are no back yards or
back alleys in Roadtown — are but the outdoor
part of private homes, and will perhaps be
devoted to shade trees and lawn on one side,
and to garden stuff on the other. Though
these yards in Roadtown etiquette will be
strictly private as far as an outsider's presence
is concerned, they will still be within easy view
of promenaders on the roof, and for the same
reason one is not allowed to dump rubbish on
the front stoop in the city, the Roadtown yard
96 ROADTOWN
will be under the general oversight and super-
vision of the Roadtown landscape gardener.
Beyond the private gardens will be vege-
table gardens, then chicken yards, greenhouses
or pigeon flies. Beyond these in larger plots
will be berry patches and coarser vegetables,
and then orchards and dairy barns and pas-
tures, and farther still, grain fields, and beyond
that, forests.
The distance back which land will eventually
be tilled by farmers living in the Roadtown, is
a matter on which I hesitate to express my
opinion for fear it will discredit the worth of
my judgment in the minds of those who have
given the matter no thought, but I think I
can carry the points by examples: Imagine
yourself to be a farmer of the future, and
accustomed to the luxury of civilization; sup-
pose you wish to raise flax as a main crop, and
breed pigeons and grow dew berries as side
issues. The pigeons and berries you could
have at a few minutes' walk from your Road-
town home. The flax would require your at-
tention, plowing and seeding a couple of weeks
in the spring, and harvesting again a week or
ROADTOWN 97
so in the summer. Would you prefer to go
five miles to that field every day for fifteen
or twenty days, or even take a tent with you
and go twenty miles and camp there, and for
the rest of the year enjoy the cooperative and
waste eliminating features of the Roadtown
home life, or would you live in a frame house on
the land and wash your face in cold water and
get up winter mornings to start a fire and
drink impure water from a polluted well and
make your wife a kitchen scullion, isolated and
lonely, and send your children two miles
through the storm to an inefficient country
school ?
Two of the most immediate advantages of
the Roadtown for agriculture are heat and
water for lawns, greenhouses and gardens.
How far this water service can be extended
from the Roadtown main will of course depend
upon the nature of the supply. But it has
been abundantly proven that water for irriga-
tion, even in the most moist sections of the
United States, was a wonderfully profitable
investment. Sewage will find a special use as
fertilizer as before mentioned, and the Road-
98 ROADTOWN
town garbage disposal works will doubtlessly
have a residue for the land.
Horse manure as a fertilizer is gradually
vanishing from industrial life, and the Road-
town will eventually depend upon the chemical
fertilizers, "green manure" crops, and from the
animals upon the land for fertilizer.
The distribution of fertilizer as well as the
receipt of heavy freight, will require a freight
station located about every quarter or half
mile. The opening of the ground for access
to the tracks will disturb a yard or two which
will lessen the rental value of the house above,
just as the rental value of thousands of city
houses have been diminished by the presence
of elevated roads. In practice such locations
in the house line will doubtless be used for
some of the numerous non-residential purposes
for which room will be occasionally planned to
suit the local conditions.
Transportation will enable the better devel-
opment of cooperative features, such as cream-
eries, hatcheries and nurseries that now thrive
under adverse conditions and will doubtlessly
ROADTOWN 99
encourage the development of others not now
anticipated.
Elimination of the Middleman.
The markets of Roadtown can hardly be
compared to present conditions at all. Where
the farmers of to-day go to the railroad station
with their produce, Roadtown farmers will
leave theirs in the warehouse of the food de-
partment. The 25 to 75 per cent of the price
that now melts away between the producer
and consumer will of necessity be divided be-
tween the producer and the consumer.
The Roadtown, either through its central
cooperation or in the form of individual
citizens will be a great consuming market for
the Roadtown farmer. Certain products,
however, for which the locality is especially
adapted must necessarily be sold outside the
Roadtown. For such, salesmanship coopera-
tion as is now carried on in the Ontario and
California fruit belts and in the creameries of
the Middle West and trucking districts of the
South will be brought into play, and with the
100 ROADTOWN
Roadtown transportation system and storage
warehouses its farmers will surely not fail
where the former have succeeded.
Cooperative Ownership of Farm Tools.
Well managed cooperation will also find
another field in Roadtown agriculture in the
form of cooperatively owned tools. I fully
believe in the electric plow, for instance; an
invention which the writer worked out some
years ago in the form of a flexible cable which
would unwind from a cylinder on the plow as
the plow moves out from the electric plug, and
will rewind as it returns. Such a device as I
propose is entirely practicable and has simply
failed to be developed because of lack of cheap
electric power near the land to be cultivated;
however, the old reliable horse will be used
back from the Roadtown line and as near to it
as he proves economical and desirable.
The use of electricity for agricultural power,
is a part of the future programme of the world
as the land becomes more thickly settled and as
land to raise horse food gradually diminishes.
How fast the change will come will depend
ROADTOWN 101
upon how rapidly the storage battery and the
means of conducting electric power are cheap-
ened through invention. At present the elec-
trical truck competes successfully with the
gasoline truck, and Edison storage batteries
are now replacing the horse cars in New York
streets where the traffic does not warrant the
regular electric car. I believe the most
economical agricultural conveyances in Road-
town will in a short time, if not from the out-
set, be light electrical storage wagons and that
the use of such vehicles as well as electrical
cultivating instruments will gradually extend
back from the Roadtown as intensive agricul-
ture develops and electric power is cheapened.
CHAPTER IX
INDUSTRY RETURNS TO THE HOME
AN influential factor in the development
of manufacturing was the invention of
steam power. The industries that use ma-
chines were forced out of the homes and into
the factories. There was no alternative. The
steam driven machines produced goods so
cheaply that the hand power, or home machine
could not earn its owner a livelihood. Thus
the factory system developed, partly because
of the mechanical necessity of concentration
where the power from one engine could by the
use of shafts and belts be made to run a great
number of machines, and partly because of the
natural tendency of the man with the most
money to acquire possession of the factory and
have others work for him.
Later the invention and perfection of the
electric generator and motor made possible
102
ROADTOWN 103
the distribution of power and the machine,
with its motor attached, again became feasible
for individual ownership. Difficulties, how-
ever, exist. These difficulties are the present
capitalistic ownership of the material and
machines, a lack of properly organized co-
operatively conducted sources of power,
present land ownership, house arrangement,
and of getting this power to the worker; and
what is of much more moment, the complete
possession by capitalistic interests of the entire
system of trade or distribution from the great
railway combination to the retail shop, through
which the individual worker must market his
products.
Wage-slavery Doomed.
The ideal — and as I believe — an attainable
ideal in a large number of Roadtown manu-
facturing industries is cooperation in the use
of land, machines, power supply and transpor-
tation of products, and individualism in the
actual operation of the machines and working
the land. This will forever solve the labor
question by abolishing the wage-system. Let
104 ROADTOWN
us look at the details as they will be worked
out in the Roadtown.
The first essential in such a system of co-
operative individual producers is power. For
this the Roadtown will have to compete in the
markets of the world.
Roadtown will possess great advantages in
this respect where it passes water power and
coal fields and can buy them. Roadtown
power plants, cooperative stores and cooking
plants, will be located where railroads, canals
or rivers cross the Roadtown, when practicable,
to save the double handling and freight on coal.
Otherwise the coal will be loaded into Road-
town cars by steam shovel and hauled at
night to the power houses where the monorail
coal cars will be dumped directly into the
stoker reservoirs. The same heat will be used
for generating power, heating the building,
cooking the food and for whatever other pur-
pose heat is required and the chimneys of
Roadtown will be miles apart. There will be
no wagon haulage of fuel in Roadtown life.
Other sources of power, such as water, wind
ROADTOWN 105
or waves, when developed will become avail-
able for the Roadtown.
The transmission of Roadtown power will
involve none of the losses from which exposed
transmission systems suffer because of the
weather. The actual cost per horse power
used will be far less than in present city dis-
tribution.
A Work Room in Every Home.
Every room in Roadtown will be wired for
light and power, but the general building plan
will presume that all regular industrial opera-
tions are to be conducted in a room on the
lower floor of the house which will be equipped
with power sockets and bolt plates in the floor
and a non-vibrating foundation installed for
machines. This room will be located where it
will have ready access to the transportation
lines, probably by a trap through the floor
through which a case of goods can be dropped
to a position where it can be automatically
swung aboard a slowly moving "pick-up" car
at night, something after the manner a mail-
106 ROADTOWN
bag is now snatched from a post beside the
railway track.
This work room will be separated from the
rest of the house by sound-proof walls. Of
course no room can be made absolutely sound
proof, for where fresh air goes sound goes also.
Very noisy industries as well as those that deal
in bulky or malodorous substances must of
necessity be out of and at a safe distance from
the resident portion of Roadtown. The
Roadtown work room, like the cooperative
cook shop, though it is there to be used and will
be equipped for a work room, yet its use as
such is not obligatory. The power socket may
be plugged, a rug thrown over the bolt plates
and the work room used for a children's play-
room, a sun parlor, a palm garden, or a living-
room. It is rented with the house, equipped
to receive suitable machines, but if the tenants
have other uses for their time, it is their affair.
The following industries will come early to
the Roadtown: clothing manufactures, knit-
ting, lace and needle work, millinery, artificial
flowers and other decorative work, including
ROADTOWN 107
all art and the so-called art crafts, jewelry,
toilet articles and small household notions of
all sorts; wood and cold metal workings, toys,
hats, gloves, shoes, book-binding, and many
similar types of light manufacturing.
The Roadtown corporation will have ma-
chines for suitable Roadtown industries made
of certain standard sizes to fit the workroom
described. These machines will be for sale
or to rent to the tenant. Under the old system
of industry, men, constantly fraught with the
fear of losing their jobs, are always anxious to
buy and own the tools of production. In
Roadtown practice there will be nothing to
gain by private ownership over publicly owned
machines. The corporation will charge just
enough rental to maintain and repair the ma-
chinery and replace with new ones when the
old are out of commission. The operator of
the machine will find it more profitable to
invest his savings in the bonds of the corpora-
tion than to make his own repairs or to replace
his own machines. Another advantage of
108 ROADTOWN
renting your machine is the option you have at
all times, that of exchanging it for some other
kind of machine.
Whether the factory is brought into the
home, or the man induced to go to the factory
will, of course, depend upon the nature of his
work. Sometimes it will be cheaper to move
the product, sometimes cheaper to move the
man. In either case the perfected system of
transportation is of equal importance.
The selling of farm products cooperatively
is practical, as is being abundantly proven in
the United States and to a greater extent
abroad. There is no valid argument that can
be put up against cooperative buying of the
raw material and selling of the finished
product of the Roadtown workers. Such co-
operative buying and selling should not for a
moment be classed with the graft tempting
work of the municipal or government buyer.
In the case of the government the money which
is used to buy cavalry horses, for instance, is
raised by revenues upon diamonds or cigars.
There is here no relation whatsoever between
the man who pays the taxes and the buyer of
ROADTOWN 109
the goods. In cooperative buying the con-
nection between the man who pays and the
price that is paid will be close indeed.
The buyer of leather for Roadtown glove
makers would be held even more closely
responsible for honest buying by the consumers
of the leather than by the stockholders of a
present corporate glove factory, for in the cor-
poration factory there is a chance to hide poor
buying behind good selling in the final report
to the stockholders. Every move of the buyer
and seller of Roadtown workers is then and
there made known to the Roadtown workman
or group of workmen who has the immediate
right to recall the blundering representative.
The trouble with government officials is that
they are too far removed from the people who
supply the money which they spend. In
Roadtown that connection will be close and
quick in action. It will be corporate industry
with interest to small or large investors, but
control and profits for and by the workers.
The bondholders will have an ever vigilant
and directly interested army of workers who
must of necessity safeguard their mutual wel-
110 ROADTOWN
fare. The worker cannot avoid this service to
the bondholder, hence he is the best protected
bondholder in all the world. I do not here
refer to values; that is covered elsewhere.
A New Type of Factory.
I believe there will develop in Roadtown a
form of factory that is intermediate between
the large privately owned factory as it exists
to-day and the individual work room of Road-
town. I refer to the small cooperative
factory, organized by a band of workers whose
separate operations are needed to complete a
single article. For illustration, suppose a
group of employes of a shoe factory are dis-
satisfied. Instead of going on a strike they
would organize a cooperative Roadtown Asso-
ciation and move into Roadtown. They could
arrange for houses adjoining and throw their
individual work room into a continuous work
room large enough to accommodate them.
They could elect their own foreman and decide
the proportion of profits to go to different
grades of work and embody these conditions in
their charter. These inner cooperators would
ROADTOWN ill
buy and sell through the central organization
of the Roadtown, as will the individual
workers. Here we will have the mechanical
saving of the combination of the several opera-
tions— the commercial saving of centralized
buying and selling, and the profits going to
the workers, not the least of which would be the
satisfaction of independence.
Once Roadtown becomes an established fact,
single workers, little groups of workers, and
whole armies of workers will be seen leaving
the old system for the new. It will be a strike
for all time, a strike from which the hiring of
strike breakers will be an empty retaliation, for
the Roadtown worker will not only work better
but his products will be less destroyed in the
mill of competitive selling — he can undersell
the strike breaker, being employer, and because
the food and house and things he buys of the
other workers will cost him less and serve him
better; the workman who joins this final gen-
eral strike can work and live better, yet
cheaper, than his successor in the old factories.
It is the beginning of the end of the barbarous
so-called "factory system" — and the end is that
112 ROADTOWN
each work will be performed in a way that is
most economical to society as a whole.
A Special Message to Women.
The Roadtown has a message not only for
men, but for women, and most especially for
young unmarried women who are looking for-
ward to the time when they can fulfill their
highest mission on earth, that of establishing a
home and raising a family. You need not put
off the wedding any longer than the time when
you can pay a couple of months' rent on a
Roadtown home, a deposit on a machine,
enough to buy raw material to keep you and
the machine busy for a couple of weeks and
enough seed to plant the garden. If "John"
has a position he can retain it and commute
without leaving you to stare out the window of
a city apartment with nothing to do all day or
frightened and lonely in an isolated farm
house. If he hasn't a job he may run a ma-
chine and work the garden also. If he is good
to you, you will be happy, and he is apt to be,
for he knows you are not dependent upon him
for a living now that you are freed from house-
ROADTOWN 113
hold drudgery and can earn as much as he.
The Roadtown will enable you to marry the
man of your choice regardless of his ability to
thrive in the present unfair struggle for a mar-
riage portion and enable you at all times to
free yourself from him on account of your
economic independence, if he proves to be the
wrong man.
The saving in cooperative buying and selling
is going to be the means of throwing many
men out of employment, just as has been the
case with the inventions of all labor saving
machinery and methods. When a man in
middle life has to fill a new occupation it is
indeed a serious matter, but one against which
it is useless to fight. If a man had been sent
down the track swinging a lantern to warn an
approaching train of a broken rail, we would
hardly countenance the holding up of traffic
after the rail was repaired, because the man
wished to continue swinging the lantern. The
Roadtown makes no apologies to the workers
whose services it will render useless. When
we get well, we dismiss the doctor. It is said
that some doctors keep us sick to keep their
114 ROADTOWN
jobs. Be that as it may, certainly there is no
denying that he who opposes cooperation, in
an attempt to preserve wasteful or unnecessary
operations is a malpracticing economic physi-
cian. To the man Roadtown throws out of a
job, it offers a chance to engage in productive
labor where one cannot get out of a job,
because so long as men receive the full fruits
of their toil, with free and untaxed exchange,
over-production as an economic calamity is
an absolute impossibility.
The End of Monotonous Labor.
Thus far we have discussed agriculture and
manufacturing as industries to be engaged in
by different sets of workers. In practice, I
believe they will be bountifully intermingled.
A man may work at a shoe stitcher for three
hours, turn off the power and go out and hoe
potatoes. Likewise his wife may run the same
machine, or a lace machine for a while, and for
a change of occupation operate the electric
hoe (something on the order of a dentist's
drill, only much larger) in the vegetable
or flower garden. Not only will Roadtown
ROADTOWN 115
free the factory worker from wage slavery,
but it will free both farmer and machine
worker from long hours of toil at monoto-
nous work. It will free our civilization
from the curse of making machines out of
men; it will sift out the indolent and place
them at the bottom of the scale of life's
good things. It will reward the industrious
as much as man can be rewarded without being
given power to enslave his fellows. It will
make men free; it will abolish machine men,
factory and sweat shops, and child labor and
woman's economic dependence on man that
makes her a sexual slave. And such work,
such making of children into men and women
instead of automatons, may lessen the speed at
which some machines are fed, and may even
make tissue paper flowers on hats dearer, but it
will certainly make cow butter and big red
apples cheaper and real flowers more abundant
and raise the per capita valuation of human
life.
CHAPTER X
R0ADT0WN MAKES CO-OPERATION PRACTICAL
IN the modern world there is no such thing
as an absolute individualist, or an absolute
cooperationist. The most rabid enemy of so-
cialistic and cooperative movements sends his
children to a cooperative school, puts his mail
in a cooperative post office, and pays the co-
operative preachers; he drinks cooperative
water and uses the cooperative sewage system
and drives his automobile on a cooperative
road. On the other hand, the most enthusi-
astic socialist wants to write his own books and
paint his own pictures and sign his name to
them and get the glory. Why, then, should
the poultry breeder, or the skilled bookbinder
cast the individuality of his labor into the melt-
ing pot of cooperative production?
In Roadtown the lamb of socialism shall lie
116
ROADTOWN 117
down with the leopard of individuality and a
child of the common good shall lead them.
A Mecca for the Individualist.
The Roadtown corporation will stand ready
to sell the product of the individuals or that of
the cooperative producers, but it will not pro-
hibit them from selling individually if they so
desire. If, for illustration, a man should wish
to complete the making of a glove, though he
accomplished but one-fifth of the combined
work of four men, yet if this man prefers to
take less pay or work longer hours in order to
have the satisfaction of working for himself
and seeing one piece of work completely
through to the finish, the community would
have no complaint — he would pay his own way
and would get his pleasure from the independ-
ence in his work. In so doing he may develop
in himself or in his child the latent qualities of
art that machine-like application would blot
out forever. In like manner, men with strong
social temperaments, to carry out their ideal
would sometimes attempt to conduct agricul-
ture, or artistic work together that could be run
118 ROADTOWN
at greater total productiveness individually.
If the difference were greater than the lessen-
ing of consumption, the venture would fail.
But if the difference were slight both types of
workmen would produce better when doing the
tiling they wish to do and the community
would get better wTork, and what is more im-
portant, better men.
The Roadtown by opening up the highways
of exchange to all, and preventing the develop-
ment of huge privately owned corporations,
gives opportunity for the free play in both in-
dividual and cooperative production. The
trust system of industry we have to-day allows
only such forms of privately owned industries
to exist as cater to its own need. Cooperative
retail stores are commonly boycotted by the
wholesalers, a notable example of which was
the cooperative store organized by the federal
employes at Washington. On the other
hand, wholesalers commonly dictate the retail
prices at which their goods may be sold by so-
called competitive retailers. The retailer who
cuts his price is boycotted. There is no in-
ROADTOWN 119
dividualism, all are tools and puppets of the
trusts.
The Roadtown Department Store.
The Roadtown will supply the wants of the
people through cooperative stores. This does
not mean that Roadtowners will be prohibited
from buying outside of Roadtown or from
selling his own product inside or outside of
Roadtown, but it does mean that the general
game of private merchandising will in Road-
town be a cooperative function and that the
wasteful multiplication of the small shops will
be eliminated. The various departments of
the Roadtown department stores will not all be
in one place, but will be strung along the line
at intervals of great enough length to give the
greatest economy in delivery. At every food
serving station will be a store supplying the
common daily needs, especially those that are
almost always ordered by telephone. These
will likely be located about every half mile.
Other classes of merchandise less frequently
called for will be located at greater distances ;
120 ROADTOWN
thus men's haberdasher shops might be every
three miles and millinery stores every two
miles, while one artist's material shop would
suffice for an entire hundred miles of Road-
town.
The same system of varying lengths of units
will apply to all Roadtown utilities. The
units will be made of such length as is found to
be most economical. The population which
patronizes three serving stations may all get
their heat from a single heating plant, while
the length of two heating systems might be
found a profitable unit to be put under the
charge of one landscape gardener.
This feature of Roadtown offers great
economies over the single large building. For
instance, in an apartment house accommodat-
ing one hundred families, lights heat, telephone,
sweeping systems, etc., must all be one hundred
family systems, regardless of whether that is
the most economical unit for the system or not.
Roadtown utilizes every utility in length which
gives the maximum efficiency for that partic-
ular device. The foregoing sentence consists
of eighteen words, but the truth expressed
ROADTOWN 121
therein is of tremendous economic significance.
Think it over.
Cooperative features of Roadtown which
require special centers will be located where
special towers or f acades can be built to break
the monotony of the house line.
The advantage of the universal transmission
of intelligence will be seen in all the industries
of the Roadtown. The entire industrial and
living system will be equipped with telephones
just as are the various departments of a large
factory. For illustration: The Roadtown
will employ an agricultural expert. At his
office will be kept soil maps of the entire Road-
town area, and he will be in a position to advise
freely with the farmers along the line what to
plant, where to plant, and when to plant. Or
if a farmer finds a new kind of bug eating up
the cabbage leaves, he will simply pick a few
bugs, put them in a bottle and send the bottle
by mechanical carriers to the agricultural office.
The agriculturist will then advise him by
'phone as to what course to pursue.
The same close touch with the producers on
the line will apply in the case of the supply of
122 ROADTOWN
food growing in the gardens along the line.
The gardeners from day to day can 'phone the
chef what they will have to offer, and he can
arrange the bill of fare accordingly, while the
manager of the store can keep the Roadtowner
posted on the probable demand for various
goods made in his work room.
CHAPTER XI
R0ADT0WN EDUCATION AND SOCIAL LIFE
AN ideal social life is one in which people
can be together when they wish to be
together, and alone when they wish to be alone.
The better the transportation facilites, the
more nearly of attainment is such a condition.
The Roadtowners in all thickly-populated sec-
tions will be within commuting distance of
nearby cities and the attractions of these cen-
ters will be open to them. But such social
life, even for those who live in the city, is sadly
deficient. City people have theaters, libraries,
churches and crowds, but they do not have
neighbors with common interests. The Road-
towners who get the food at the same kitchen,
and hear the same band play, and sell their
products cooperatively, and promenade on the
same endless roof garden, and send their chil-
dren to the same instructors, are going to get
123
124 ROADTOWN
acquainted if they so desire. The entire
Roadtown will be in connection by the loud
speaking telephone, and folks can call on each
other on a stormy night without so much as
getting out of their comfortable rockers, but,
for that matter, while there will be more to
keep a Roadtowner at home, there will be less
to keep him from going away from home when
he wants to. If anyone is lonesome in Road-
town, it is simply because he has no friends,
and if he has no friends, it can scarcely be any-
one's fault but his own.
But the social life of Roadtown will not be
limited to city trips and neighborly calls. The
Roadtown will have cooperative amusement
centers, just as it will have cooperative kitch-
ens and stores. At spots where the Roadtown
crosses streams or passes the mountains or the
sea shore and at certain distances apart,
amusement parks will be located. Here will
be the athletic grounds, swimming pools, gym-
nasiums and the means of entertainment com-
mon and uncommon to like resorts. At more
frequent intervals in the Roadtown, and so dis-
tributed as to give picturesque variety to the
ROADTOWN 125
house line will be museums, art galleries, the-
aters, lecture halls and dance halls. All such
features that are supported by the corporation
must, of course, be open to all residents. Or-
ganizations that are not for the benefit of the
majority of the inhabitants will be supported
by their adherents. The halls of the associa-
tion will be open to all meetings, religious or
otherwise, where nonconflicting dates can be
arranged.
The Roadtown will offer opportunity for
the revival of athletics upon a scale unheard
of since the Olympian games of ancient
Greece.
Roadtown Athletics.
The Roadtown community, because of the
spirit of cooperation and mutuality which will
pervade all phases of life, will extend into
mature years the institutional patriotism
which forms such a large part of modern school
and college life. Under such conditions we
may expect to see developed a grand series of
meets in all manner of competitive arts and
sports. The winners of the local meets or ex-
126 ROADTOWN
hibitions will again compete at the grand ath-
letic and art centers.
The Roadtown will bring the opportunity to
indulge in the sports and recreations much
nearer the life of the whole people than in the
present civilization.
There is no reason why every boy, big and
little, should not attend the ball games and ath-
letic meets on the home field as well as the
grand finale in which his team participates.
Transportation will cost him nothing, the
ball ground will be owned by the community
and the hours of Roadtown labor will be set by
the will of the worker and not by the greed of
the capitalist's purse.
Education for Old as Well as Young.
Roadtown education will apply to all ages
of both sexes. The whole living scheme of
Roadtown will be a vast school. The modern
school, a place where we send our children to
be herded in immense droves under the care of
girls who use the teaching profession as a
makeshift until an opportunity of marriage
arrives, is far from perfection as a means of
ROADTOWN 127
child development. The disciplinarian system
of education which crushes out individuality
and molds all children in the industrial-po-
litical virtue of being bossed, is likely to vanish
as a population is freed from economic slavery.
Roadtown will provide instruction for those
who wish to learn and citizenship prizes and
privileges will go to the educated, and compul-
sory education and graded schools in time will
have no excuse for existence. These are strik-
ing statements and I am simply calling atten-
tion to the change that I believe will come
about naturally and unresisted.
The Roadtown will have to pay county
taxes, but on account of its 1,000 population
to the mile will influence the location of these
schools in Roadtown. At first the use of the
present public school methods must necessarily
be employed ; gradually as the Roadtown gains
influence and better teachers are secured the
educational system can be adapted more
closely to Roadtown life.
In the first place, the Roadtown home will
be an enlightened one. The Roadtown library
will be a book store house, not a reading-room.
128 RQADTOWN
If the citizen wants a book or magazine he
telephones the library and in a few minutes the
book is delivered to him by mechanical carrier.
The kind of free library we have to-day re-
quires ten cents car fare and much time to get
a book.
There will be a library of telegraphone
records, which do not have to be duplicated for
every household, but one set at a central office
will suffice, where one girl can run a compli-
cated programme of music and lectures for
many homes.
Eyes to be Used Less and Ears More.
Excessive reading is hard on the eyes and it
lacks much of the efficiency that auditory meth-
ods have of conveying ideas. Our education
has been entirely too much from the printed
page and too little from the use of the ear.
The Roadtown dictograph and telegra-
phone will change all this. The child who has
not yet learned the letters can be taught to
speak German and told stories of nature and
history. And in all this education the parent
will learn along with the child and become
ROADTOWN 129
fascinated by such a wonderful process. The
significance of this telegraphone and dicto-
graph will never be appreciated until we have
it in operation. The telegraphone is not a
cheap instrument to build, but when operated
on a large scale will be extremely economical
for each family. From a programme an-
nounced in advance a choice may be had
from a hundred pieces kept playing at once.
More than one wire can lead to each house if
desired. The family may be in the drawing-
room, listening to grand opera or a lecture on
philosophy, and Jimmy may be upstairs,
tucked in bed with ear muffs clapped over his
curls, being put to sleep by Sinbad the Sailor
or the Twenty-third Psalm, according to his
mother's idea of child psychology.
Outside of the visual and auditory library in
the home, the second great new feature in
Roadtown education will be the home work of
the child's parents. In work room and garden
the child will learn what the world is for.
About the most pitiable thing imaginable is a
child whose parents do not believe in child la-
bor. I do not mean the killing of children in
130 ROADTOWN
mines and mills, but the child labor such as you
see on the wholesome farm, where the child
does his part along with the rest of the family.
The present system of keeping a child from
all work until his body and mind are formed
and then plunging him into industrial life is
only exceeded in folly and cruelty by the child
slavery system commonly known as "child la-
bor." "All work and no play makes Jack a
dull boy," but all school and play and no work
makes Jack a jackass.
The Roadtown child will learn his parent's
occupation, and his uncle's and aunt's occupa-
tion, and his neighbor's occupation, and will
have more ability to take care of himself when
he is ten years old than the present city-bred
college man of twenty.
But the community as a whole has some
claim on the child's life and the child's future
as well as the parents — a fact that all intelli-
gent parents will recognize. For this reason
instruction outside the family is desirable and
will be arranged by the Roadtown public
school system.
The occupation of housekeeping having
ROADTOWN 131
been eliminated, the kindergarten teaching
force of Roadtown will be composed of women
of mature minds, many of whom will have
borne children and are therefore equipped with
actual experience in caring for them.
With the entire population to select from
more real or natural-born teachers will be
found than under the present regime, where
most married women are limited in occupation
to family food manufacturer and household
drudge.
Mothers for Public School Teachers.
To these instructors the children will go at
hours as arranged for. One woman will take
little tots into her home to amuse and care for
them while their mothers are away or at work.
Another will instruct the children in mathe-
matics. The man skilled in botany will in-
struct groups of children in his garden, and the
chemist and mineralogist in their laboratories.
Instead of grade schools we will have child uni-
versities; instead of college degrees there will
be citizenship examinations, with rewards of
positions of trust in Roadtown management.
132 ROADTOWN
Instead of college young folks and old fogy
old folks there will be an industrial university
and universal athletics and sports. The Road-
town school system will be the most versatile
imaginable. It will develop the greatest gen-
iuses the world has ever known and save the
most money. Pounding literature into the
head of a natural born mechanic is both eco-
nomic and mental waste. The universal query
in Roadtown will not be what does he know,
but what can he do.
Physical education will be fully as much a
matter of public concern in Roadtown as men-
tal education. It ought to be, for disease is
contagious, ignorance is not. The Roadtown
child will play in the open country like farm
boys. He will be brown and sturdy and fall
out of trees and go swimming in the creek, but
he will not be a wild animal, or a pet to be
taken out and aired by the nurse — distinguish-
able from the poodle only by the absence of the
chain.
ROADTOWN 133
Lowest Death Rate in History.
The Roadtown death rate will be the low-
est in the history of the world. Roadtown will
give the freedom to choose from the work and
play of city and country, the exercise and rest,
which is necessary to the development of a
good physique. The Roadtowner will eat
pure food, drink pure water, breathe pure air.
His bedding and clothes will be aired and
when necessary fumigated. His laundry will
be disinfected. His house will be made germ
proof. The result will be that consumption
and typhoid and pneumonia will disappear
with the first generation. A few diseases
which are transmitted by contact and the occa-
sional cripples that are born so will persist, but
sickness and premature death in Roadtown
will be so rare as to cause wonder. Dissipa-
tion and the use of patent medicines and nar-
cotic drugs cannot be prevented, but with co-
operative industrial organization and no one
profiting by the trade, these and other health-
destroying fakes will have far less chance to
grow or even survive.
134 ROADTOWN
The public utilities of Roadtown will include
hospitals and nurseries. Public sanitary offi-
cers will supervise and consult with residents.
Private physicians will be available if there be
any demand for them, and when a doctor is
wanted he will be able to come quickly. For
the liniment and bandage for a cut thumb, a
speedier service than the monorail will be avail-
able, for the telephone and the mechanical car-
rier will be brought into play. No one in
Roadtown can live more than two or three min-
utes from the drug store.
With all the cooperative utilities and me-
chanical perfections that Roadtown offers
there is a very natural tendency to associate
the essentials of home life with certain forms
and locations of houses that our experience
connects with the best home life we have known
rather than to get down to the real causes and
principles involved.
Much of our present sense of house archi-
tecture is indeed destined to be quite lost, for
the Roadtowner enters his home from above
or below, and the pleasurable emotions aroused
by the view of one's cottage as he comes
ROADTOWN 135
up the walk must be attached to other sen-
sations. But home is a place for companion-
ship as distinct from the swirl of business and
the jostle of the crowds; nor is all compan-
ionship necessarily human. A lawn to keep
and some chickens and garden to care for are
far closer to the essence of home than the gable
on one's cottage.
In the first place the Roadtown will be freer
from noise than either city or village. There
will be no lumbering vehicles and no tramp of
either horse or man upon unshielded pavement.
All stairs, roof promenade, hallway and mono-
rail platform will be matted; while the noise-
lessness of the transportation service is one of
the fundamental conceptions of Roadtown.
There is no clanking furnace in the Roadtown
dwelling. There is no common dumb-waiter
through which one receives unwelcome knowl-
edge of his neighbor's business. That the
sound will not enter from the roof above or the
open windows of one's neighbor's was ex-
plained in a previous chapter. To be spied
upon by one's neighbors is even more objec-
tionable than to be overheard. In this respect
136 ROADTOWN
Roadtown is superior to any type of dwelling
yet devised, for in all other forms of residence
the windows of the house look out upon the
street. The Roadtown passersby are above
and below and no one may look into the win-
dows unless he is in a private garden. This
unique arrangement gives the Roadtown home
a sense of privacy and a freedom in the use
of light and air now known only upon isolated
farms.
The actual nearness of strangers to the
Roadtown homes is of no concern, since one has
no knowledge of their presence. That we
meet them upon the roof promenade or at the
monorail station is certainly not an objec-
tion.
The Roadtown inhabitants rent of the com-
munity, not of a private individual. Such a
lease will be permanent as long as the lessee
pays the rent and does not offend the rules of
the commonwealth. Sales for taxes and arrest
for the breaking of the civil law are present
limitations to individual liberty, from which
the principles of Roadtown departs not one
iota, but simply extends it in keeping with the
ROADTOWN 137
greater number of common projects in which
the community is interested.
A Home in the Truest Sense.
The only further sense that attaches to the
idea of home is as a protection from the pov-
erty of old age. A plan whereby the Road-
town corporation will give permanent rent to
a person who has paid a sufficient sum into the
corporation treasury may be developed co-
operatively by the tenants. But a place to
live in is only half insurance against poverty of
old age, and we can hardly doubt that a com-
munity trained in cooperation, as the Road-
town community will be trained, will not only
ultimately insure its aged inhabitants' rent but
a sufficient sum to keep them in decent com-
fort. The first generation will never quite for-
get the egoistic pleasure that is derived from
our present forms of deeds for houses and
lands, but the sentiment of home ownership as
we now know it will die with the generation.
The individual pleasure of house construc-
tion will be lost in Roadtown, just as we have
already lost the pleasure of vehicle construe-
138 ROADTOWN
tion. The man who argues that people will
not live in Roadtown because they cannot build
and own their own homes is a lineal descend-
ant of the man who said they would not ride
on railroads for similar reasons. The Road-
town inhabitant will simply transfer his senti-
ments and put his individuality into other arts.
The builder of a modern private railroad car
furnishes trucks and couplings which will en-
able him to be carried by engines and over rails
used in common.
Carriages, railroads, automobiles, in their
time, were at first opposed by the artists of the
day.
The Roadtown now looks like a Chinese wall
— when it is realized it will look like a Road-
town, and Roadtown will mean comfort, con-
tentment and prosperity, and new sentiment
and new art will replace the old.
CHAPTER XII
WHO WILL BUILD THE ROADTOWNS
MY many friends have advised me to sell
the Roadtown patents or form a com-
pany and sell stock. But these people have
failed to realize the comprehensiveness of the
Roadtown project. Indeed, should I have
promoted the Roadtown as a monopoly for pri-
vate gain I would have unquestionably been
the meanest man on earth, for in me and my
backers would have been combined all the des-
potism of the landlord, the railroad magnate,
the factory slave driver, the wasteful middle-
man, the extortionate retailer and half of the
commodity trusts. The private owners of the
Roadtown would be absolute master of the in-
habitants in every phase of life.
I know no better way to explain to my well-
meaning friends who wear dollars instead of
lenses in their spectacle frames why I do not
139
140 ROADTOWN
care to make a private monopoly of Roadtown,
than to say that I was raised in a country town
and know the sad limitations of human aspira-
tions due to the loneliness and narrowed hori-
zon of isolated existence, and that I have also
lived in the congested districts of New York
and of other large cities and know the pain
and misery of the life of the city, and that for
me to think of promoting Roadtown as a
private graft would be exactly comparable to
the idea of the discoverer of diphtheria anti-
toxin keeping the secret for selfish gains.
The Roadtowns will be built by the people
who believe in its principles and who have
money to invest at 5 per cent, or the market
price of a security better than municipal bonds.
The Roadtown corporations will each be
chartered with a nominal capital stock which
will bear no dividends. I will at first hold this
stock in trust. This stock will be the voting
stock of the corporation, hence, I or trustees
I might name will have control of the policy
of the company within the limitations of the
charter. I wish this stock to be non-dividend
paying so the Roadtown can never be made to
ROADTOWN 141
pay profits to me or anyone else and to pay
interest on bonds only to those who are cash
investors. My object in holding or trusteeing
this stock is to keep the control of the Road-
town out of the hands of those who may use
such control as a means to the numerous forms
of graft commonly present in corporations.
I wish to stand between the bond holders and
the residents of Roadtown and the grafters,
and this privilege is the reward I ask for the
invention of Roadtown — I want no promoters
or monopoly profits, no inventors' stock, and
no fancy salary, but I do want the opportunity
to see that no one else gets any such advantage
over the Roadtowners.
My reason for wishing to control the voting
stock of Roadtown is that I do not believe a
democratic organization can be created at once
in its entirety but that it will have to evolve
naturally. If an oligarchic form of control
was established now it would doubtless be per-
petuated for generations and become corrupt
as are present corporations and governments.
I believe that during my life time, I, with
the aid of good advisers, can evolve a purely
142 ROADTOWN
democratic form of control and thus per-
manently prevent it from falling into corrupt
hands. I confidently expect the cooperation
of men of the highest national reputation in
matters of trusteeships.
Home Rule for Roadtowners,
The Roadtown management will have to
grow and develop starting perhaps with one-
half mile section and adopt such rules as are
necessary to the protection and comfort of the
tenants. They will be consulted about what-
ever concerns them directly and thus gradually
evolve into a plan of self-government. When
I say self-government I mean as regards the
things that under our present system they
haven't a word to say. They go to the polls
occasionally and vote for somebody but can
seldom trace any benefit from the vote. In
Roadtown direct legislation, initiative, referen-
dum and recall will enable a man to really have
a say.
The control of the local affairs in Road-
town will be wholly a matter of local option
ROADTOWN 143
and the suffrage will be exercised by both
sexes.
There will be no definitely set districts as
townships or municipal wards, but each ques-
tion to be voted upon will be submitted to the
parties concerned, for illustration : the steward
will be elected or recalled by the people whose
food the preparation of which he superintends.
They will also determine his salary. If they
vote him a high salary and he hires an expen-
sive set of helpers and sets a luxurious table
the people who elected him can eject him if
they do not approve of his extravagance, but
if they desire to live wastefully they can do so
and the people of more moderate tastes can
move into a section which is known to be mod-
erate. By such opportunity for local option,
people will be given the chance of finding sec-
tions to suit their tastes and purses.
Roadtown will be a great equalizer of
present life by the removal of special privi-
leges of the rich and those who are "in" to reap
where they have not sown, but there will be no
tendency to dictate to the people how they
144 ROADTOWN
should spend the money they have equitably
earned. You now have to ask the gas trust,
the ice trust, the milk and meat trust, the
middlemen's trust and many others even if it
is permissible for you to marry and live a
normal life.
The original price of Roadtown rents will be
made to vary with the desirability of the loca-
tion. Favored localities will be settled by peo-
ple with the money to pay for it, and these
people will naturally vote for high class service
and this in turn will be added to the original
price of rent. In this manner certain sections
of Roadtown may become more expensive and
so the various grades of society will find their
wants readily supplied.
Roadtown will possess a leveling influence,
it will hasten the equality and brotherhood of
man and the Kingdom of God upon the Earth,
but it will not reduce man to a single level at
one operation, and if these natural laws of
human nature should be outraged by an en-
forced leveling programme, the full Roadtown
development would be seriously retarded for a
generation.
ROADTOWN 145
Detached Villas Practical but Undesirable.
In my earlier work of planning on Road-
town I thought it would be necessary to cater
to the wishes of the well-to-do by discontinuing
the house line in some sections and breaking it
up into detached villas. By carrying the
monorails and all pipes and wires in a trench
from villa to villa the full benefit of the co-
operative functions could be attained, but of
course with the additional expense of the extra
land, extra length of the trench and its con-
tents, the extra wall and the loss of the roof
promenades. I know of nothing that will give
a better conception of the wonders of Road-
town than to consider for a moment this villa
construction. By the continuation of the
Roadtown trench between villas it would be
possible to give to a modest ten or twenty thou-
sand dollar villa facilities that would cost half
a million if installed in a single country or
suburban home.
But when we had such a villa completed
what advantage would we have over the con-
tinuous house? A few added windows on two
146 ROADTOWN
sides of the house that would look out into the
other fellow's windows across the lawn and in-
stead of passersby on a grand promenade above
our heads entirely removed from our sight, or
we from theirs, we would have a sidewalk by
the door where our neighbors who became
curious as to our domestic affairs could stroll
and stare into our windows and doors. In
practice more light and air could enter the two
freely open sides of the Roadtown house than
through the carefully shuttered windows on
four sides of a "private" villa. I am satisfied
that very few if any sections of Roadtown will
be built in villas because they will offer no ad-
vantages that I am aware of to offset the dis-
advantages. People will accept the uniform-
ity of the exterior of the roofs and walls as
they now accept the uniformity of the street.
Their personal tastes will be put on interior
decorations or in beautiful gardens that may
be seen from the roof promenade and enjoyed
by all.
Before the bonds are offered for the develop-
ment of any section of Roadtown the matter
of municipal franchise, and options from
ROADTOWN 147
suburban land owners and farmers for the right
of way and for garden sites will progress as
much as is practicable and a statement will be
issued showing the appraisal value of this land,
the status of the franchise matter, together
with architects' drawings and engineers' plans,
and specifications setting forth the estimated
cost of a certain finished structure with equip-
ments in a certain locality. This will give the
prospective bond buyer an exact knowledge of
the property upon which he may secure the
mortgage in exchange for his money which will
be held by trustees until the required amount is
raised and then disbursed by them according
to the specifications. That this will be an
excellent security will be assured by the fact
thac the options will be secured at a very low
rate because of the competition raised between
rival land owners all of whom desire transpor-
tation and the other Roadtown facilities.
This principle has been made use of thou-
sands of times in railroad and trolley promo-
tion and has poured millions of dollars worth
of watered stock into the hands of crafty pro-
moters. As there is no promoter's graft in
148 ROADTOWN
Roadtown the bidding of land owners for this
line of city through their neighborhood or
property will turn to the benefit of the bond
holder in enhancing the solidity of his security
and to the land owner in bringing a strip of
city to his farm.
Builders of Roadtown Take Minimum Risk.
The wonderful economies of the Roadtown
construction, such as cheap building material,
principally rock and sand from the farm, steam
shovel excavation instead of hand shovel, work
train instead of cart hauling and poured
cement construction instead of hand labor, the
economies of open piping and wiring, and the
valuable patents that are being donated be-
cause of the humanitarian bases of promotion,
will give a better building for the money than
can possibly be made under present conditions
anywhere and make the first mortgage on
Roadtown, including as it does transportation,
telephone, water, gas, electric, sewage and
other franchises, real estate mortgage and a
mortgage on a permanent fireproof house, will
make it the best possible form of security
ROADTOWN 149
known, and no inflated land values. Don't
forget that feature. Such a bond will be vir-
tually a municipal bond as the people living in
Roadtown can be taxed in the form of rent to
meet the interest. No one who has fully
grasped the principle of Roadtown will doubt
for a minute that it can be built, for it is not a
complicated mechanism which must fail if one
part proves faulty, but simply the grouping to-
gether of inventions already in use. And even
if some of these should prove to be unfeasible
they would hardly be missed in the total.
The whole question of the value of the Road-
town bonds depends upon the question as to
whether or not people will live in the Roadtown
after it has been built. I have spent a hun-
dred pages telling of the comforts, conven-
iences, social and industrial advantages of
Roadtown life. Heretofore I might have
fallen into minor errors, but no sane and fair
mind can reason away the fact that Roadtown
life will be wonderfully attractive to the vast
majority of mankind. As proof of this, over
a hundred high class families have spoken for
apartments in the first section, if it happens to
150 ROADTOWN
be built near New York. But suppose we
admit for the sake of argument that the Road-
town house was no better and no worse to live
in than a typical suburban house of to-day.
Clearly then the worth of the Roadtown bonds
will depend wholly upon the price of Road-
town rent which in turn will depend upon the
original cost and the cost of operation.
The Cost of the First Mile of Roadtown.
With a view of answering this question I
submit the following letters and figures from
Frank L. Sutton, a consulting engineer of 80
Broadway, New York City. These figures
are based upon the cost of the first mile of
Roadtown. These figures show that it will
not be necessary to build a long section of the
Roadtown before it can underbid the rental of
the isolated house or city apartment and thus
secure population and begin business.
It goes without saying that as the length of
the Roadtown increases the cost per mile and
the cost per house both in construction and
operation will decrease.
ROADTOWN 151
FRANK SUTTON,
CONSULTING ENGINEER,
80 Broadway,
New York, November 12, 1909.
Mr. Edgar Chambless,
150 Nassau Street, New York City.
Dear Sir : Referring to the report hereto attached
giving a general description and the estimated cost of
the mechanical and electrical equipments for the Road-
town, as well as the cost of construction of the build-
ing and equipment, and further the cost of operation,
would say that these results have been carefully com-
puted and there is no doubt but that the Roadtowns
can be built and operated for the figures given in the
report.
On account of the arrangement of the building and
the convenience by which raw material can be trans-
ported, the proposition is without doubt the most
economical and efficient form of good construction
that can be devised.
Very truly yours,
Feank L. Sutton.
152 ROADTOWN
REPORT
ON
CONSTRUCTION WORK AND POWER EQUIP-
MENT FOR PROPOSED
ROADTOWN
BY
FRANK SUTTON, CONSULTING ENGINEER,
80 BROADWAY, NEW YORK CITY.
The following calculations are based on the con-
struction of two hundred and fifty (250) two-story
houses in a continuous row. This also includes a
continuous glass enclosed roof promenade 10 ft. wide
and 8 ft. high. The estimate gives the complete con-
struction of these buildings, including the tunnel for
the proposed monorail road, also a central power
plant, including kitchen, laundry and such other
equipments as may be necessary for the proper main-
tenance of such an establishment. It further includes
all mains, pipes, wires, so that when the plant is com-
pleted it would be ready to turn over to the occupant
in a completely finished condition.
Each house will be equipped with hot water heat
furnished from a central station ; electric lights, elec-
tric power, telephone connected with central station,
vacuum sweeping system, complete plumbing and
water supply.
ROADTOWN 153
The calculations which are given herewith are fairly
close and without doubt under proper management
and accessible facilities for getting material the work
can be done for the estimate given.
250 houses, 21' wide X 20' deep, with seven
rooms well furnished as per illustration
@ $1,800 each $450,000
Five cooperative centers, tower-like in effect 50,000
Wiring houses based on $ 50 per house 12,500
Heating, « " " $150 " " 37,500
Plumbing, " " " $125 " " 21,250
Laundry machinery 8,000
Cooking apparatus 12,000
Boiler plant and heating apparatus 40,000
Refrigerating plant 10,000
Electric plant and switchboard, telephone 40,000
Wiring, feeder mains, etc . 12,000
Brick Chimney 4,000
Sewerage system 20,000
Water supply and mains for irrigation and
domestic use 40,000
Gas and vacuum producers and holders . . . 10,000
One mile of house — equipped $777,250
Cost per house — equipped $3,109
154 ROADTOWN
The principal fixed charges for labor, coal, interest
on the investment would be as follows:
Chief engineer $ 2,400
Two (2) assistant engineers, $80 per month,
$960 each 1,920
Four (4) firemen, $60 per month, $240 each 2,880
Two (2) extra men, $50 per month 1,200
Chef, $75 per month 900
Three (3) cooks, $40 per month 1,440
Four (4) helpers, $20 per month 720
One (1) laundryman, $100 per month 1,200
Ten (10) women, $20 per month . 2,400
Total labor cost $15,060
Coal 4,000
Oil and waste 500
6% interest on $581,250* $34,375...
7% " " 196,000* 14,550... 48,852
Total expense for one year's operation,
interest and depreciation $68,385
Or each tenant's rent for year to be $22.76 per
* The lower rate of interest is charged upon the house and
fixtures, the higher rate upon the plants and machinery.
ROADTOWN 155
month or $3.25 per room, exclusive of charge for food
but inclusive of furniture, power, cooking, heat, light,
water, vacuum sweeping, laundry and the delivery of
all food, parcels, produce, etc.
The population could without doubt be increased
by 500 to 1,000 houses more without any material in-
crease in the principal items for labor, such as engin-
eers, firemen and heads of departments. The only
extra increase would be for help in these departments
which would be governed by the amount of work re-
quired.
TRANSPORTATION CALCULATIONS.
Using Autos
Four (4) electric autos for passengers and
food $12,000
10% interest, depreciation and re-
pairs $1,200
Six (6) men @ $75 per month . . . 5,400
$6,600
For 250 families $1.70 per month.
Mr. Sutton has not included the Boyes
Monorail in his report because he was asked
to make an estimate for a single mile of Road-
156 ROADTOWN
town. For this length the auto service is the
more economical. Mr. Sutton, however, finds
no fault with the Monorail, as is seen from the
following letter:
Mr. Edgar Chambless,
New York City.
Dear Sir: In reference to the adoption of the
Boyes Monorail system for Roadtown would say that
I have carefully examined the drawings and general
outline of the scheme designed by Mr. Boyes and be-
lieve it to be well adapted as a means of rapid and
noiseless transportation, and further believe that the
operating expenses of this system and the cost of
construction will be extremely reasonable. The de-
sign of the system from a mechanical and electrical
standpoint is entirely practical.
Very truly yours,
Frank L. Sutton.
The total cost for building and operating
the Boyes monorail system between New
York and Philadelphia or for ninety miles is
estimated by Mr. Boyes as follows :
ROADTOWN 157
ESTIMATED COST OF BUILDING AND OPER-
ATING ROADTOWN TRANSPORTATION.
As submitted by Wm. H. Boyes using the
Boyes Monorail system.
Line from New York to Philadelphia — 90
miles. Cost of the double express and
single local track, not including ex-
cavation, cement work, nor power
plants which are figured in general
cost of Roadtown, 270 miles at $15,000
per mile $4,050,000
24 express trains at $28,000 672,000
18 local trains at $5,000 90,000
Total cost of equipment $4,812,000
Interest and upkeep at 7y2% $ 360,900
126 motor men at $1,000 126,000
75 guards, ticket men, etc 60,000
Total $ 546,900
Monthly cost per family $2.
Economy Increases with Length.
The Roadtown becomes more efficient as it
grows in length, but the argument that it can-
158 ROADTOWN
not be started because it will be too tremen-
dous an investment to build a house a hundred
miles long is wholly without meaning, for a
Roadtown of a hundred apartments would
show an advantage over a box style apartment
house of the same room capacity and this effi-
ciency would increase with every added apart-
ment. The first Roadtown bonds will be
floated for a mile or half mile unit and will
require funds well within the cost of one apart-
ment house. To this beginning house units
will be added as fast as needed and more utili-
ties put in as the increasing length warrants it.
Suburban land owners will donate rights of
way and garden strips, farmers will donate
larger gardens, and ranchmen immense farms.
Each will be governed somewhat by the bid-
ding on proposed competing routes, but
it is safe to predict that they will all recognize
the enormous increase in land values that a
strip of city will bring with it and bid accord-
ingly. It is interesting to speculate on the
size of their bids for such a wonderful advan-
tage in view of their very liberal gifts to steam
ROADTOWN 159
and trolley roads which have given them so lit-
tle in comparison.
The location of the first Roadtown will be
determined by the people who give the new
form of civilization the warmest welcome. If
you have any inducements or practical sug-
gestions to offer, write, I'll be glad to welcome
and consider them. It may be in Long Island
or in California or in Japan, but the locations
of the subsequent Roadtowns will be more
easily predicted : they will be wherever there is
enough population to make cooperative house
construction worth while and sufficient wealth
and enterprise to execute such an undertaking.
The logical location for early lines of Road-
town will be at the end of present rapid transit
or commuting facilities of our cities or will tap
these lines far enough out to avoid high land
values. Thus there will be ample vacant
ground to start a Roadtown at the uptown end
of the New York Subway that could build
right through to Boston. Real estate within
or near the city will, of course, be higher in
price, but as such Roadtown dwellings will be
160 ROADTOWN
able to compete in every sense with the present
prevailing forms of two story houses seen in
such districts, and have in addition all the
Roadtown advantages including indoor rapid,
noiseless and dustless transportation, they
could afford to pay for the extra value of such
land and still be the object of envy by the out-
side residents. As soon as it has passed be-
yond the present suburban or speculative belt,
the Roadtown will at once take on the life of
the city in the country as pictured in this book,
yet all the inhabitants will have quick and cheap
transportation services into the old cities.
The demand for such Roadtowns for com-
muting purposes will be so great at first as to
prevent the earlier structures from coming into
their full use as homes for a population that
shall support itself by work within the Road-
town proper. How quickly this demand will
be filled is a matter of speculation. The eco-
nomic incentive will readjust wisely. It never
fails. At present, with all the suburban devel-
opment, the heart of the city is becoming more
and more densely populated. We have not
been able to get people out of the city as
ROADTOWN 161
rapidly as the population increases. The
Roadtown will materially aid in this fight to
get the people out of the city to live.
A Real Remedy for Congestion.
" But with the development of the Roadtown
a new factor enters this fight against conges-
tion. The suburbanite must depend upon the
city for his livelihood, the Roadtowner need
not. The result will be that the Roadtown as
soon as built will begin to take people away
from the city to work as well as away to sleep,
and this means a real relief of city congestion,
not simply the frantic piling up of humanity
twice each day at the gates of the city.
You might ask, what will be the ultimate
place of the Roadtown in the civilization of the
world? The answer is as impossible as would
have been an answer to the ultimate place of
the railroad in the civilization of the world had
that question been proposed seventy years ago.
The railroad is a great civilizer. It carries
with it all the material aids to civilization that
can be hauled in a freight car. The Roadtown
carries into the home what the railroad takes
162 ROADTOWN
only to the freight and express office, and it
carries in addition the civilization of pipes and
wires which the railroad cannot transport. It
would have been a wonderful vision for a man
of the first quarter of the last century to have
attempted to picture the ultimate effect of the
railroad — but his vision would have fallen short
of the reality. Try for a moment now to take
the railroad out of civilization and substitute
the methods of 1825. I believe the Roadtown
will be to the twentieth century what the rail-
road was to the nineteenth and that my present
efforts to predict its future would fall just as
far short of the reality as would Stevenson's
dream of the railroad civilization of to-day.
CHAPTER XIII
IN R0ADT0WN THERE WILL BE NO TRUSTS
THE only effective way to fight the trusts
is to cease to patronize them and the only
way to cease to patronize them is to move into
an environment which is more economically effi-
cient.
Every labor saving invention in the history
of man has thrown someone out of work. The
grain binders were broken and burned by the
old fashioned harvest hands. The hand type-
setters opposed the introduction of the lino-
type. But the economic invention came in
spite of this opposition. The Roadtown is a
new arrangement of civilization, a new plan
for all commerce and all city building; it will
do for the entire programme of transportation
what the linotype did for the type setting in-
dustry. The entire industrial life of the world
will desert the present economic system just as
163
164 ROADTOWN
the farmers deserted the old scythes and flails.
As a result a large proportion of the people
who now work with the crude systems will be
thrown out of employment. Who are these
people? They are teamsters and expressmen,
and clerks, messengers, and bookkeepers, and
others too numerous to mention, but these peo-
ple are merely the servants of private corpora-
tions. And the corporations own the ware-
houses, wholesale and retail stores, and the little
shops, and street cars, and cabs, and conduits,
and the gas and electricity, and hundreds of
other things. These, corporation or trust
owners, and their political henchmen who live
on the fat of the land and who by employing
a lot of servants distribute our goods and in-
telligence to us by a crude, wasteful, dishonest,
and disorganized system, will also eventually
lose their jobs. The men who drive the
wagons will learn to raise vegetables, and the
girls behind the hat counters will learn to make
hats. But their bosses with appetites whetted
to luxury will be out of a job "for fair" for
with the exception of the mines and foreign
commerce, the Roadtown will leave them no
ROADTOWN 165
chance to graft off the producer and consumer
by the aid of a privately owned and barbar-
ously inefficient mechanism of distribution and
house construction.
Verily, there will be weeping and wailing,
and soft hands blistered, and fair names of the
privileged families without prestige in the
world, for the trusts will have lost their jobs,
and there will be but one trust, and that will be
owned by the people.
Shall we Miss Them?
The Roadtown is remarkable for the new
things that it will add to civilization, but it is
even more remarkable for the things that will
be conspicuous for their absence. In the
Roadtown there will be no streets, no street
cars and no "subway air"; no kitchens, no coal
bins, no back yards or back alleys full of crime
and tin cans ; no brooms, no feather dusters, no
wash day ; no clothes line, no beating the carpet
or shaking the rug out the window ; there will
be no clothes brushes, no pressing clothes by
hand, no lugging the beds out to air them ; the
Roadtown home will have no dish washing, no
166 ROADTOWN
cooks, no maids, no janitors, no furnace, no
ashes, no dust, no noise, no kindling to split
nor buy for five cents a bundle ; there will be no
moving vans, no coal wagons, no ice wagons, no
garbage carts, no ash carts, no milk wagons,
and no delivery wagons; no horses except for
pleasure drives and no need for a society for
the prevention of cruelty to animals ; in Road-
town there will be no fire engines, no cabs nor
taxi-cabs, no mixing of pedestrians and ve-
hicles, no street car blockades, no grade cross-
ings and no "death avenues"; there will be no
bargain rushes, no small shops, no middleman's
profits, no bill boards, no advertising of useless
and harmful articles, no waste of money for
little bottles and cans and bags, no adulterated
food, no wilted vegetables, no unsanitary
"loose" milk, no systems of cesspools and
wells to spread typhoid and other disease
germs; for the Roadtown farmer there will
be no hitching the horse to go to church nor
driving to town to get the mail, no kerosene
lamps, no slipshod ungraded country school, no
lightning rod peddlers and no book agents ; in
Roadtown there will be no need for umbrellas,
ROADTOWN 167
rubbers nor overcoats in the daily routine of
business — such protection from the weather
being only required by the keepers of live stock
and upon occasional visits to the old style city ;
there will be no snow to shovel, no slipping of
horses or humans on icy streets, no street
cleaners, no water wagons, no swill tubs, no
rain barrels, no manure carts, no dumb-waiters
to pull up, no popping and sizzling steam radi-
ators (hot water heating instead) ; no beds to
make, no expensive strings of funeral carriages,
no fire escapes, no waiting in rain or snow to
catch a car, no canned goods, no delicatessen
diet ; in the Roadtown there will be no unem-
ployed problem and no men out of a job except
those who are too lazy to work, and yet there
will be many changes in occupation, for the
Roadtown will have no news boys, no mes-
senger boys, no mail carriers, no traffic police-
men, no teamsters, no cabbies, no street car
conductors, no expressmen, no delivery boys,
no peddlers, no push cart men, no waiters to
tip, no insurance agents ; no organ grinders, no
rag pickers nor old clothes men, no street fakirs
nor sandwich men; no beggars, no liveried
168 ROADTOWN
flunkies; no sweat shops, no child labor, no
wage slavery, no rent on fictitious land values,
and no trusts to gobble up the fruits of labor.
The history of civilization shows that me-
chanics control economics, that economics con-
trol morality, and that the morality of the time
is expressed through the law; and conversely
law does not control morality nor morality
economics nor economics mechanics. Me-
chanics is the foundation of all that is good
and bad in civilization, law the paint on the fin-
ished structure. The painters who are con-
stantly retouching the exterior get credit for a
good deal of change but their work is of little
real moment compared with the changing of
the fundamental structure.
The Boadtown Religion.
A tremendous step toward the perfection of
civilization will be made when the world recog-
nizes the two following principles:
(1) That cities should be built in long con-
tinuous lines.
(2) That housing, as a framework, and
scientific transportation, as a compact mechan-
ROADTOWN 169
ism to fit therein, should be developed as a
single enterprise.
The Roadtown will tend to perfect transpor-
tation as applied to people, commodities and
intelligence. Highly perfected transportation
means opportunity to get together or to get
apart. It means socialism for the socialist, to-
gether with all the advantages of individualism,
and individualism for the individualist, to-
gether with all the advantages of coopera-
tion.
The mission of the Roadtown is to assist in
the development of the physical, mental and
moral qualities of mankind through the gradual
elimination of all physical, mental and moral
waste, thus creating an environment where
selfishness and inequality of opportunity will
gradually disappear and where man will finally
en j oy all the fruits of his labor.
The above expresses the principles of the
Roadtown religion — a faith which holds that
the Kingdom of God can be realized on this
earth and points a practical way by which such
realization may be attained.
If you accept these principles and can add
170 ROADTOWN
them to the faith of your present religion you
are indeed a Roadtowner.
The Roadtown is as humanitarian and revo-
lutionary in its principles as is Single Tax or
Socialism and like these is destined to become
a great social movement enlisting the minds
and hearts of those who have developed the so-
cial conscience — who believe in it and are will-
ing to work for a civilization wherein the equi-
table distribution of wealth may be realized.
But these other movements depend for their re-
sults largely upon the conversion of the major-
ity of the population to their creeds. Road-
town will be a great social "movement" but it
will be more than a movement — it will be a
realization and that speedily. In fact the ob-
ject of the author in painfully preparing this
little volume ( for I am a round peg in a square
hole at book writing) is to lay the Roadtown
plan before the public to a degree that will
stimulate the active interest of enough people
to accomplish through their cooperation the
financing, and building the first section of
Roadtown. The first section built, no human
power can stop the Roadtown revolution.
ROADTOWN 171
So if you find in the spirit of Roadtown a
response to the feeling within your own soul
write to the author that you may be counted
upon as a Roadtowner to believe and to
perform.
If you do not understand the mechanics of
Roadtown, write. There are engineers who do
and who can explain this to you. If you are
an architect or an engineer, an inventor or an
agriculturist with a criticism or practical idea
that will make Roadtown better, write. If you
live in a locality suitable for the construction of
a Roadtown line, write. If you know of any
one else who can help the cause write to them
to write.
Whether you be preacher, carpenter or pub-
licist ; bookkeeper, broker or blacksmith, if you
wish to play a part in founding the new civil-
ization, talk, preach, speak, write or publish
the Roadtown gospel. Send the book to one
friend and advise the rest to buy it. Write an
article on the subject and get your editor
friend to publish it.
If you fear that the crookedness of finance
that has blackened many a fair gift to human-
172 ROADTOWN
ity may smirch this latest boon — make it your
business to investigate fully ; consult with men
of wide experience and unquestionable honor
who are well posted on this particular subject
who may help you to establish in your mind
the true nature and phenomenal significance of
this movement. And above all if you are but a
man among men toiling at your allotted task
and taking the stinted portion which the
"system" allows you, write, that your name
may be filed on the waiting list as one of those
to whom the occupancy of a Roadtown house
may be offered as soon as the cement of the first
section has hardened and the civilizing currents
have been turned into the arteries of "A New
Heaven and A New Earth" here on this God
plowed and human harrowed planet in this
the early years of the Twentieth Century.
THE END
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